


The Way Things Break

by GrayJay



Series: The Way Things Break [1]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brothers, Family, Fix-It of Sorts, Not X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) Compliant, Summers Brothers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-07-15 15:00:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7227142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrayJay/pseuds/GrayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The photo is of a boy--maybe fourteen or fifteen--with dark hair and dark glasses. He’s slouched in front of an institutional backdrop, and it takes a moment for Hank to connect the living face to the autopsy pictures.</em>
</p><p> </p><p><em>There’s something else familiar about the kid’s face, the shape of the mouth, and Hank is racking his brain, trying to figure out where he knows it from--</em>a former student, maybe?<em>--when Alex speaks up again, voice flat. “It’s my </em>brother<em>.”</em></p><hr/><p>Summers Brothers, lost and found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way Things Break

**Author's Note:**

> A world of thanks to [teaberryblue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue) for a lot of rounds of beta reading, and for the ice cream truck. <3
> 
> This is mostly a grand experiment in bridging comics canon and movie continuity (or, rather, movie continuity through _Days of Future Past_ ), because I'm a glutton for punishment who can't handle universes in which Alex starts out older than Scott.

“Have you ever been to Nebraska before?” Hank asks somewhere over Illinois, as Alex is starting on his second glass of whatever the hell fancy whiskey they’re slinging on Pan-Am these days.

“Yeah,” Alex tells him. “It’s a shithole.” He leaves it there, because as far as Hank knows, Alex sprang into existence full-grown in a supermax cell; and Alex is just fine with that.

*

Somewhere in the shadow of the last year, they’ve gone back to pretending that everything is normal (and, by extension, that “normal” was ever even relevant, that the world hasn’t been crumbling and burning for longer than any of them can remember). Hank hides in his work. The professor supervises the renovations and holds court to anyone willing to listen about his plans for the school, the team, the future; and all Alex wants to do is yell that _there is no fucking team, the team is fucking dead_ , and they’re the last three people who should be raising the next generation of _anything_.

Except there’s no one else; or at least no one else who’s not the C.I.A. or Erik--or fucking _Raven_ , who’s still out there somewhere, doing God only knows what. Alex has thought a few times since Saigon that he should look her up--say “thanks,” at least--but wherever she is, she clearly doesn’t want to be found. “She’s out of her damn head,” Hank snaps, when Alex finally works up the guts to ask. He refuses to elaborate further.

So Alex paces around the grounds like a trapped animal, and there isn’t a day when he doesn’t ask himself over and over what the hell he’s even doing there. On good days, he can convince himself that it’s loyalty, or that he actually believes on some level in what Xavier wants to do. The rest of the time, he chalks it up to laziness, or fear of losing the only place that he’s ever left and found still waiting when he got back. He blasts the bunker walls black and sleeps as little as he can get away with, because every time he closes his eyes he’s falling, on fire. The Blackbird and Cuba blur with the old Mosquito and the Alaskan woods blur with Saigon and fifty miles of impassible jungle. Sometimes Scott’s trying to hold on to him, but his grip gives way; or he’s a ghost, and Alex slips straight through his hands. Sometimes it’s not Scott, but someone else--Xavier, or Hank, or Darwin; Gitter or Daniels--who lands in a twisted heap on the sand or below the broken trees.

Even when he’s awake, Alex never stops bracing for the crash.

Cerebro lights up an hour before Xavier’s buddy at the Bureau calls to tip them off about a situation outside Omaha: half an orphanage blown away by what the FBI has already written off as a gas explosion and local witnesses say was a beam of red light like something out of a comic book. The jurisdiction’s iffy, and the local cops have shut the whole thing down in less time than it should’ve taken to file a preliminary report; but Agent Duncan hints that if Xavier wants to send his boys down to poke around, it might be worth their while.

So Charles books Hank and Alex tickets to Omaha, and they go through the formalities of asking if he’s coming along, and he goes through the formalities of excuses. This time, he’s staying home to keep tinkering with Cerebro and work on a “private project” that Hank and Alex both know has the initials “J.G.” and lives in Annandale-On-Hudson because being a shameless snoop is the only way to even remotely level the playing field in a house with a telepath. (“New C.I.A. contact,” Hank guesses. “New piece of ass,” Alex counters, because it’s never not funny to see Hank blush like a schoolgirl.) 

Flying is awful, flying is _always_ awful, so much so that the awfulness has become routine: the two of them in first class, white-knuckling the armrests while Alex drinks too much to keep from thinking about what’ll happen if he panics at 20,000 feet, and Hank silently mouths through calculations of the serum’s half-life and the odds that he’ll turn blue somewhere over Indiana.

From the hotel, it’s a half hour to the outskirts of town, and Hank gives up on small talk ten minutes in. Alex stares out the window for as long as he can stand, then starts fucking with the lighter and counting off the seconds it takes Hank to tell him to stop before he sets the rental on fire.

“Fuck off,” Alex snaps back. He’s pretty sure he could do his half of their routine in his sleep, by this point.

“How much did you drink on the plane?” Hank asks, like he always does.

“Not enough, obviously,” says Alex, and sticks a finger in the lighter socket--which they both know won’t do shit to him but is enough to make Hank wince anyway.

The Milbury Home for Boys turns out to be a blandly institutional building with half its west wing blown to hell and a tall fence that takes Hank all of half a second to hop, and Alex just a little longer to scramble over. The place gives Alex the creeps--not that he believes in ghosts, but he’s seen places before, back in ‘Nam, where shit had gone down bad, and the _wrongness_ had seeped into the ground, into the walls, clinging like a bad smell; and the Milbury Home has that same fucked up vibe. It’s even worse inside: silent as a tomb, toys discarded on the floor, a few beds still unmade-- _like fucking Pompeii_ , Alex thinks, _or Hiroshima_. He and Hank work in grim silence, swabbing for explosive residue, taking photos of a blast pattern Alex is pretty sure didn’t come from any accelerant he’s heard of.

Hank’s the one who finds the subbasement, sniffs out the steel trapdoor like a hound dog. It’s locked, but easy enough to blast off its hinges to reveal a flight of stairs leading into pitch black. 

Alex digs out the flashlight, but Hank shakes his head. It’s a reasonable precaution: with someone who can see in the dark, there’s no reason to tip off whatever might be waiting. It’s just that it leaves Alex goddamn useless--can’t see, can’t aim, can’t _anything_ \--and worse, _helpless_. It’s not even the thought of dying that makes his skin crawl--that’s felt inevitable for as long as he can remember--so much as the idea of not seeing what’s coming in time to at least get a swing in.

But he can’t say any of that, not to Hank, so he just grits his teeth, grabs the edge of Hank’s jacket, and follows him into the dark. Every step, the wrongness gets thicker, until Alex can feel it pressing against his throat, snaking into his lungs with every breath.

And then Hank says, “ _Oh_ ,” and stops so suddenly that Alex runs straight into him. He’s about to say something, tell Hank to stop being a pussy, but something in Hank’s voice warns him off.

“What?” he whispers, instead; and Hank doesn’t say anything, just grabs the flashlight out of Alex’s hand, and trains it on the floor in front of them.

For a second, Alex thinks the thing in the beam is a doll. It’s small enough, sprawled in a cradle of broken glass and spilled fluid that he realizes a moment later must be the remains of a specimen jar. And then he realizes it’s got fucking _scales_ , one hand twisted into a claw, face drawn half back from an elongated skull. The stench hits him half a second later: gasoline and formaldehyde and death. Alex knows as bad as it is for him, it’s got to be a thousand times worse for Hank, who’s making a choked noise in the back of his throat as he swings the flashlight across the wrecked lab.

The room is a mess: equipment and tables smashed, shelves dragged down from the walls, like someone wrecked the place in a frenzy, then doused the lot with gasoline and dropped a match. There are smashed jars everywhere, and the remains of whatever was inside. Alex is pretty sure he spots a human foot half buried under the charred mess.

“What the _fuck_ , Hank?” Alex whispers. “Tell me this is--it’s some kind of fucked up movie set. This has to be fake, this is fucking insane, this can’t be--” 

Hank doesn’t say a word, just shakes his head, tight-lipped and wide-eyed. 

“We need to get out of here,” Alex tells him. “This is way the hell above our pay grade.” He’s already starting back up the steps, but Hank grabs his elbow; and even skinny and furless, Hank’s a whole hell of a lot stronger than Alex.

“Someone didn’t want anyone finding this place,” Hank hisses back. “We might not have another chance.” And he’s not fucking wrong, so Alex grits his teeth and helps Hank dig out the camera.

They inch around the perimeter, Hank on point, snapping photo after photo of broken glass and mangled medical equipment that Alex does his goddamn best not to think too hard about. Halfway around, Hank silently passes Alex the camera, then doubles over and retches on the floor; and Alex doesn’t know what the hell to do, just stands there like a moron while Hank dry-heaves against the wall.

“You done?” he asks Hank, once it sounds like he’s stopped. 

Hank nods to something ahead of them, and Alex swings the light up until he spots what Hank’s looking at: a twisted mass of metal that looks like it had been some kind of examination table, with fucking four-point manacles anchored to the steel. It takes a moment for him to realize that it’s not just the warped metal that makes it look so skewed: the fucking thing is _child-sized_.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” says Alex, and between that and the smell, it’s all he can do to keep from joining Hank against the wall.

Hank spits, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “I knew there were people who--scientists, men like Shaw, who--but I never--”

“Shaw’s dead,” Alex points out.

Hank snorts, which means he’s finally freaked out enough to come full-circle into bitchy. “And while it’s terribly comforting to believe there’s only one bogeyman, I doubt even Erik managed to track down them all. Or it could be a student--someone carrying on his work.” He sets his jaw and straightens up. “Come on.”

They hit the jackpot on the other side of the stairs. There’s a filing cabinet upended, folders emptied and burned; and it looks like another bust until Alex spots the scorched corner of something half crushed under the edge of the cabinet. Hank pushes the thing aside, and Alex pulls out the envelope. It’s two inches thick; and even if the papers inside are charred and the whole thing’s a stiff breeze away from crumbling in his hands, Alex figures it’s the best chance they’ve got of working out what the hell happened here.

* * *

Hank has never entirely learned to lower his guard around Alex. It’s not that he doesn’t _trust_ Alex--he does, at least when push comes to shove; and there’s no one Hank would rather have at his back in a fight. But Alex can snap from quiet competence to playground cruelty fast enough to give Hank whiplash, with no predictable pattern he’s ever been able to discern.

So it’s somewhere between disconcerting and a relief when Alex is quiet all the way back from the orphanage and even offers Hank first shower without comment. Hank turns the water as hot as he can stand, hot enough to fill the air with steam, and scrubs until the shower runs cold and his whole body is red and raw and he can only sort of smell the rot and char that’s clinging to his skin through a bar and a half of soap. (He’s lucky, he thinks, that it’s _skin_ he’s scrubbing, that the fear in the basement hadn’t been enough to push the other him out, because then he’d never have gotten the smell out of his fur.)

He’s half expecting Alex to say something shitty about Hank running through the hot water, but he just gives Hank a nod, says, “I dumped the clothes in the incinerator,” and slips past to take his turn while Hank rifles through the suitcase for something clean. 

The hotel is a relic, an art deco palace refitted with the worst of modern architecture. Everything is stark white and smells like Lysol; and once he’s back in jeans, Hank turns the lights as bright as they’ll go and sprawls across one of the too-soft beds to try to get his head on straight before he calls home.

Charles is out, or asleep, or in Cerebro-- _not in Cerebro, he can’t reach the breakers, he could fall_ , Hank thinks in a moment of panic, before he remembers that today is _J.G._ day and calms down enough to leave what he hopes is a vaguely coherent message with the answering service. He considers trying the Bureau, but he doesn’t know Duncan’s direct line--or whatever cloak-and-dagger system he and Charles have for communicating, since most of their association is distinctly sub rosa--so he moves over to the desk and starts peeling back the burned edges of the envelope

Alex emerges a few minutes later, dresses in silence, then comes and looms over Hank’s shoulder until Hank wants to scream or punch him. The subbasement must’ve gotten pretty far under his skin, too; because there are a thousand and six things Alex could be needling Hank over right now, but instead he just asks, voice rough, “Anything we can use?”

Hank shakes his head, and walks Alex through what he’s worked out so far. He’s fairly sure that it’s a medical file, or files--the whole thing consists of four or five folders, charred and gummed together, and Hank is still working his way through the first. The few notes that are still legible are in some kind of encoded shorthand that Hank can’t crack, at least not yet, still reeling from the basement. He’s figured out a little bit--dates, what he suspects may be a subject designation, a few common abbreviations--but he suspects the real jackpot is the stacks of photos under each set of reports. He’s started to turn to them twice, and stopped both times, hands shaking. The idea of having to face what he’s expecting to see while the lingering stink of the place is still clinging under his nails leaves him reeling and nauseous.

Alex reaches down to the folder Hank’s about to start on, and scrapes at the filthy tab with a thumbnail until he can make out the text, written in the same old-fashioned hand as the pages Hank’s stacked along the desk and one bed. “ _SUMMERSS_ ,” Alex reads aloud, drawing out the second S with a hiss.

“Something you haven’t been telling us?” Hank asks, and he’s relieved when Alex actually laughs. He had noticed the name when he’d first started into the file, and quickly discounted it as coincidence--Summers is a common enough surname. “Ever seen that spelling before?”

“Probably a typo,” Alex says, and he sits down to help Hank sort through a few dozen more indecipherable charts.

Hank goes through the whole set three times, combing for details he might have missed. He’s stalling--he _knows_ he’s stalling--but he still can’t bring himself to look through the photos. Finally, Alex pulls out the stack from the first folder; and Hank has to either take it or admit that he’s too scared.

The emulsion on the top print is half melted, and Hank can’t even make out any of the image--just a date, _Dec 1958_ , in the same old-fashioned hand as the rest. He should peel it back, start looking for something they can use, but he can’t stop thinking about what he’s going to see when he does, and his hands won’t stop trembling.

Alex pushes the photos away, and kicks the leg of Hank’s chair. “Hey.”

“I don’t know why Charles hasn’t called back,” Hank mumbles. “We should--”

“Go take a walk,” says Alex. “You’re fucking useless like this.” He checks his watch, then grabs Hank’s wallet from the bedside table and tosses it over. “Here. Go see if there’s any decent pizza in this dump. I’ll start on that mess.”

Hank nods, grateful for the out. As the door is closing, he hears Alex call, “Find a liquor store, too.”

The hotel room is empty when Hank gets back with a double-pepperoni pie and a twelve-pack, and at first he figures Alex must have gone out. Then, he registers the mess--the folders, spread out over the desk and beds, contents scattered haphazardly. While he’s still processing that, there’s a crash from the bathroom; and then another; and then a low, choked wail that reminds Hank of the dog he found caught in a bear trap in the fifth grade and still has nightmares about. The door is ajar, and Hank catches a glimpse of the towel rack half ripped out of the wall and a web of cracks across the mirror. He doesn’t even think, just runs, as fur sprouts and he feels his body _stretch_ and change, like shucking off a too-tight necktie.

But all he finds in the bathroom is Alex: standing in the bathtub, a stack of photos at his feet, punching the wall over and over and making that low, horrible keening sound. He must have been doing it for a while, too--the wall is smeared with blood from his knuckles, and Hank can see cracks across some of the tiles. Hank is paralyzed, _baffled_ , because in more than ten years of shit and horror, he’s never once seen Alex cry; and the whole scene scares him even more than the abandoned orphanage, more than the nightmare lab. More than _Sentinels_.

“Alex?” Hank finally says. He can’t get used to his voice like this--the pitch, they way every word comes out half-growl.

Alex mutters something too low for Hank to make out, then punches the wall again, hard enough to send a tile tumbling down into the tub.

“Are you okay?” Hank asks, just before Alex’s fist slams into the wall again; and Hank, still running on reflex, jumps into the tub and pins Alex’s arms before he can take another swing. He’s expecting Alex to fight, but Alex just _caves_ , topples Hank back against the faucet; and then they’re both sitting in the tub, in a mess of ruined photos. Alex is still sobbing, and Hank keeps holding on to him, because he doesn’t know what else to do and he’s afraid of what’s going to happen if he lets go.

“Alex,” he says again, and Alex shrugs away, rests his forehead against the edge of the tub.

“Summers, S,” he says, dully.

“What?” asks Hank.

“It’s not a typo,” Alex says, without moving. “It’s an initial. Summers, S. _S. Summers_.”

The tub is still damp from the shower, and while Alex isn’t looking, Hank does his best to surreptitiously rescue the photos in reach and transfer them quietly to the mat, fumbling them between his claws and feeling like a ghoul the whole time. They’re pretty much what Hank’s been expecting: autopsy photos, anatomical details--plenty ugly, but nothing either of them hasn’t seen before--and Hank is trying to work out the missing piece, the thing that snapped Alex into _this_ , when Alex adds, “S for Scott.”

“You found a name?” Hank asks. “Did you get anything else? Identifying information?” Alex huffs out a humorless half-laugh, and lets his hands unclench, and Hank realizes there’s a photo crumpled in one of them. He reaches for it, carefully, and Alex drops it into his hand. The photo is of a boy--maybe fourteen or fifteen--with dark hair and dark glasses. He’s slouched in front of an institutional backdrop, and it takes a moment for Hank to connect the living face to the autopsy pictures.

There’s something else familiar about the kid’s face, the shape of the mouth. Hank is racking his brain, trying to figure out where he knows it from-- _a former student, maybe?_ \--when Alex speaks up again, voice flat. “It’s my _brother_.”

* * *

“I thought he was dead,” Alex tells the wall. He can’t remember how he got from the bathtub to the bed, but he can hear Hank hovering behind him, human again and breathing in scared little gasps like he’s afraid Alex is going to punch him, or explode--which Alex is pretty sure he won’t, because somewhere between Hank hauling Alex out of the tub and patching up his knuckles, all the fight drained away somewhere into the shitty shag carpet, and all that’s left is dead weight.

“They told me he was dead,” he says, again. “Before, I mean. And I thought--not like I could’ve--but he was fucking _alive_. For five whole years. And I didn’t even fucking know. And now he’s fucking dead again.”

“Before?” Hank asks.

Alex flips onto his back, stares at the popcorn stucco of the ceiling. “We fell out of a plane.”

“You mean Cuba?” Hank asks, because for a genius, he’s awfully goddamn slow on the uptake.

“I mean fucking _Nebraska_ ,” Alex tells him. “I was eight. Scott would’ve been--ten? Eleven? No, it was August. Ten.”

“Wow,” says Hank.

“I told you this place was a shithole.”

“You never--you never talk about your family,” Hank says.

“No shit,” says Alex, with a laugh. “Not like I know shit about you, either.” He keeps it that way on purpose--no point. Easier to walk away. _And look how well that’s worked out._

Hank sounds nervous. “There’s not much to know.”

“Your folks alive?” Alex asks. After this long, it’s the least he should know about a guy he calls _Bozo_ and has nearly died next to more than once.

“Yeah,” says Hank. “They live upstate. Schuylerville.”

“Good times,” says Alex, and looks at the ceiling some more. He can trace pictures in the stucco--like clouds, and he knows there’s a word for that, but it slips out of his head every time he gets close. _Para-something. Parachutes, on fire._

“What about you?” Hank asks.

“No,” says Alex. The people back in Hawaii don’t count; it’s not like he talks to them, and anyway, they’re not even really his. “My real dad, he was a test pilot.”

“Oh,” says Hank.

“He’d restore old planes for fun. Scott, too--he was fucking nuts for anything that flew, even more than dad. He was saving up to get his license when he turned fourteen. It was this whole thing. He was gonna join the Air Force.”

“What about you?” Hank asks.

“I was eight years old, man,” Alex says. “I wanted to be a dump truck or something. Kids are dumb as shit. Not Scott, I mean, he was crazy smart. Dad let him co-pilot, sometimes.” He tries to remember where he was going with this. _Scott. Planes. Scott, flying from Dad’s lap. Scott, dead._ “So we flew everywhere, vacations, whatever. And this one plane, this ancient piece of shit Dad and Scott had been working on since I was in kindergarten, something went real fucking wrong.”

“Oh, shit,” says Hank.

“ _Oh, shit_ , is right,” says Alex. “It was this restored--I don’t know, I never paid attention. Back from when they made planes out of, like, pitch and kindling. Fire got into the parachutes before they could even find to the extinguisher. Mom buckled Scott into--I guess the one that was less fucked up, then the threw me at him and pushed us out the hatch.” He remembers every word she said, too; but damned if he’s gonna tell that to Hank.

“Wow,” says Hank.

“Yeah,” says Alex.

“Were they okay?” Hank asks.

“No,” says Alex, because he’s too tired to be mean about it. “They were dead, and Scott was dead, and I got sent to Hawaii and got arrested a bunch for arson, and we all lived happily ever after.” He thinks for a moment. “No. Assault. Arson was later.” Hank doesn’t say anything, and Alex feels vaguely that he should explain, just in case. “I punched a lot of social workers.”

“Oh,” says Hank. “Wow. I’m sorry.”

Alex laughs. “I’m not. Fuck those assholes.” It occurs to him a moment late that Hank was probably talking about the crash, not the social workers. “Wanna know the really fucked up part?”

Hank doesn’t say anything.

“Scott was alive when we landed,” Alex tells him. “It was really fucking bad, like, shit’s on fire, and the parachute’s fucked up, and I was hitting him and telling him we had to go back to get Mom, God fucking knows how I expected him to do that. And he’s all of, like, _ten_ , probably scared out of his goddamn mind, and somehow he fucking manages to keep a grip on me. All the way down.”

The window is open, and Alex watches the light play across the ceiling, traces it in the air with a fingertip. “His face was--I mean, there was blood fucking everywhere, and he was--I don’t know. I don’t know how the fuck he even got the parachute off us, it was on fire, and of course I was fucking useless. And then he makes me sing camp songs and play fucking _I Spy_. To distract me, I guess, That was the kind of shit he did.” _Scott hiding under the blankets with him when Alex was scared of thunderstorms. Scott, whose first question was always “Can Alex come, too?”_

“And he was--I knew he’d hit his head, and I remember I thought if he fell asleep he’d die, so I was trying to keep him awake, but I guess I fell asleep, and when I woke up, it was a total shitshow, with cops and ambulances and shit, and Scott was fucking nowhere. They wouldn’t tell me anything for fucking days, and when someone finally told me he was dead, I thought they were lying. Cause, I was pretty much okay, I just had, like, a broken arm or something, so I figured he should be--and it wasn’t until later I realized that was probably _why_ I was okay, because he’d--because he--” _Scott on the ground, face covered in blood. Scott on a steel table, peeled open like a frog in biology class._

“I fucking hate flying,” he tells Hank.

“Yeah,” says Hank. “He sounds, um--Scott sounds like he was--”

“He was the fucking best,” says Alex.

“I’m so sorry,” Hank says.

“Yeah,” says Alex, turning back to the wall. “Me, too.”

*

Charles shows up in the morning, and Alex doesn’t even get out of bed, just lies there pretending to be asleep--probably fooling no one, but he doesn’t really care--and listening to Hank and Charles whisper in the corner while they sort through photos of Scott’s dead body.

Finally, Charles wheels over to the bed; and Alex feels a hand on his head, petting him like a goddamn cat, and hears Charles say, very quietly, “I’m so sorry, Alex.”

Alex is pretty sure if anyone apologizes again he really is going to explode, so he forces himself to sit up, leaning against the headboard, head against his arms because it’s too heavy to hold up.

“What a fucking waste,” he finally says. Scott wouldn’t have spent his teen years starting fights and setting fires. Scott did his homework without complaining, and ate vegetables without getting bribed, and taught Alex to tie square knots, and could identify almost any plane by the sound when it flew overhead. Scott wouldn’t have ended up in supermax. _Because he’s dead_. “Fuck.”

Charles keeps talking to him, and Alex doesn’t really pay attention, just stares at the wall as the words skim overhead. Then Charles and Hank go out, and Alex can’t take another minute in his own head, so he rolls out of bed and drags himself into the shower. By the time they get back, he’s cleared up most of the mess in the bathroom and is sitting on the bed, trying to wrench the end of the towel rack back into place.

“I’ll pay for it,” he says, when he hears the door open.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Charles, so Alex shrugs and leaves the rack on the bed.

“Find anything?” he asks, not sure if he really wants to know the answer.

“No,” says Hank. “The lab was empty. Stripped, no prints, no anything. Someone must’ve gotten to it.”

“Oh,” says Alex. He knows he should be angry, but he doesn’t have anything left to be angry with. He felt this way in country, he remembers--hollow, blank. There are weeks he doesn’t really remember; ones he’s pretty sure he didn’t even notice while they were happening.

“Agent Duncan is pulling some strings at the Bureau, looking into the orphanage,” Charles says. “County records are appallingly insubstantial.”

“Whoever Milbury was, he had friends in high places,” Hank adds.

“Oh,” says Alex, again. _This should matter_ , he thinks-- _on your fucking feet, soldier_ \--but everything feels dull and distant.

“There’s still the--other thing,” Hank goes on. “The explosion--whoever took down the wall might still be out there.”

“That is a concern, yes,” says Charles, and Alex thinks of Erik, and what it’s going to mean if a kid who can do that kind of damage is out there looking for revenge. Charles must catch the thought, because he bites his lip and looks indescribably sad. Alex wants to tell him that whatever this motherfucker has coming, he’s more than earned it, and Shaw did, too; but they’ve had that fight enough to know it never goes anywhere but circles.

Hank is milling around, gathering up papers. “We should get back to Westchester,” he says. “We’re not going to find the mutant--if there is a mutant--without Cerebro up and running, and I need to get these into the lab.”

“Alex?” Charles asks, and Alex pictures the three of them strapped into first class while the plane burns around them, and then Scott’s eyeless face, and he’s pretty sure that if he has to fly again right now, he’ll lose his goddamn mind.

“I’ll hitch back,” he tells them. “I’m--I just need to clear my head.”

Charles and Hank exchange a look. “I’ll go with you,” Hank offers.

“No,” Alex snaps. “Don’t be stupid. Go do your lab thing. I’m not--I just--”

“Need space,” Charles finishes, and Alex is too grateful to bother yelling at Charles to stay out of his head. “You’ll be careful?”

“I was thinking I’d hotwire a Porsche,” Alex says. “See if I can squeeze in some rally racing for the mob, or whatever the fuck people do for fun in this pit.”

“Hilarious,” Charles says drily, and hands him a stack of bills that Alex suspects might buy him an actual Porsche if he wanted. He’s never been able to figure out whether Charles genuinely has no clue how money works, or is just rich enough not to care. “Find something reliable,” he tells Alex. “Not like that deathtrap you keep in my driveway.” 

Alex starts to jump in to defend the Dart, that he’s _this close_ to getting it running, and Charles wouldn’t know a decent set of wheels if they ran him over; but Charles just says, “Alex. I don’t want to lose you, too.” That shuts Alex up for long enough for Charles to rattle off rules: don’t drive more than eight hours at a stretch, stop to eat, stop to sleep--in a _hotel_ , Alex, not the car--call in every night to let them know where he’s staying.

“You’re not my dad,” Alex mutters, knowing how ridiculous it sounds even as he says it.

Charles looks at him, sad-eyed, and says, “I know.”

Charles’s cash covers a late-model Fairmont and time and gas to meander up into Michigan for a couple days, wandering around the dunes and pitching rocks into a half-frozen lake until Alex can’t feel his hands. From there, he heads down to Chicago, and spends four nights playing pool and starting fights, getting kicked out of bar after bar until he’s drunk enough to fall asleep without Scott’s autopsy photos wallpapering the inside of his eyelids.

After losing two days somewhere in Ohio, he somehow ends up in a blisteringly cheery mom ‘n’ pop motel outside Cleveland, where he’s dragged out of sleep and into a murderous hangover at five in the morning by a uniformed teenager banging on his door.

The kid stammers and apologizes and finally spits out that Alex has a long-distance call at the desk from someone Xavier. Alex pulls on jeans and drags himself down to the office, because the only two options he can think of are that the mansion has burned down or Charles has started drinking again; and either way, he’d rather know before he pulls in to Westchester.

“ _What_ ,” he growls into the phone.

“Alex!” Charles exclaims. He doesn’t _sound_ drunk, and he’s way the fuck too chipper for someone whose house burned down, or _anyone_ at five in the goddamn morning.

“Are you dead?” Alex asks, then revises. “Is _Hank_ dead? Did you assholes burn down the fucking house? Because I _told_ you--”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous, we’re--” Charles sounds confused, then cuts himself off. “Oh, dear. The time. I am _dreadfully_ sorry. Hank and I were working, we utterly lost track. Are you still in Cleveland?”

“ _You called me here_ ,” Alex reminds him. “Are you--what’s going on?”

“Oh!” says Charles, brightly. “We’ve had a series of blips on Cerebro--Hank thinks it’s a false positive, we’ve been recalibrating, but there’s still our missing friend from Omaha, and Duncan’s been tracking a series of incidents that he’s fairly sure are mutant related. The Bureau’s not saying, of course, but, _well_. It’s probably just coincidence, but given recent events, I think we’re all a bit squeamish, and I’d just as soon someone took a look. Would it be too much trouble for you to swing by the city on your way home today? It’s probably nothing, but--”

“No, it’s, um, it’s fine,” says Alex. _All good things, right?_ He grabs the pen and pad from the desk. “Got coordinates?” It occurs to him that Charles might be throwing this at him just to get him home; and Alex is surprised to realize that he doesn’t really mind.

“That’s the thing,” Charles tells him. “It’s not consistent--it’s been jumping around. The same signature, but blipping in and out. Call when you’re close, and I’ll give you whatever the most recent coordinates are at that point.”

“Great,” says Alex, trying to blink the world into any degree of focus. “I’ll, um, call when I’m in the city?”

“Brilliant,” chirps Charles, and hangs up.

The kid is still hanging around--eavesdropping, Alex assumes. “Everything okay?” he asks, as Alex heads back toward his room.

“Yeah,” Alex tells him.

“That your boss?” asks the kid.

“He’s a goddamn lunatic,” Alex tells the kid, then locks the door, crawls back into bed, and sleeps through checkout on purpose.

*

By the time Alex pulls off the Turnpike and finds a phone, it’s after dark. Charles tells him that the blip has made its way from a slum in Queens to a warehouse near JFK. 

Alex knows this one’s going to be bad before he’s even turned off the car. The warehouse is too dark, floodlights smashed out; and as he pulls up, he can see the mangled remains of a lamp post. _So much for a false positive._ Smart would be finding a payphone and calling Xavier, not diving in without backup, but Westchester is an hour out and Alex is aching to hit something; so instead of making the U-turn, he kills the headlights and takes the last quarter mile on foot.

The side door of the warehouse is smashed in, hard--a blast, not a battering ram. No scorching, either. _Just like the orphanage_. Alex hesitates for a second, wonders if he should duck out and call after all, because, _shit_ , if it’s a kid--

If it’s a kid, it’s a kid who can knock down buildings. Alex heads in.

He trips over the first guard maybe fifty feet later--out cold, but still breathing. The intruder isn’t even trying to be subtle: Alex follows the blast marks and unconscious guards a hundred feet further in and then two floors down; which is where he starts to notice the remains of steel doors with electronic locks, marked with clearance levels that keep going up. The whole thing smells rotten as hell, and Alex is starting to wish he’d asked Charles to do a little more digging before he stormed in like the cavalry.

Another floor down, Alex finally finds a conscious guard slumped against the wall beside a freight elevator. The guy’s in bad shape, but he’s lucid enough to slur “Stop” and shakily raise a flashlight and gun as Alex approaches.

The gun is smashed, barrel half gone, and the guard’s eyes aren’t really focusing. “NYPD,” Alex gambles, flashing his wallet.

The guard lowers the remains of his gun. “Thank Christ. You got backup?”

“Yeah,” Alex lies. “You see where he went?”

“You’re not gonna be able to take them down. They’ve got some kind of goddamn raygun--”

“How many?”

“Two.” The guard’s starting to get worked up. “You have to stop them. They’re headed for the reactor. They hit that like the doors, it’s--”

“Hiroshima,” Alex finishes for him. “ _Fuck_. Which way?”

The reactor is another five floors down, an agonizingly slow descent on the old freight elevator. Alex spends the ride swearing under his breath and trying to think of a way to stop two assholes with a raygun without melting the place down himself. He’s no closer to a strategy when the elevator grinds to a stop. Alex hears a muffled yell and then a crash from somewhere ahead, and he wrenches the gate open and starts to take off down the hallway.

The minute he steps out of the elevator, he’s hit with a-- _feeling_ \--not fear, exactly, but a strong push to stay away, a psychic _Keep Out_ sign pulsing neon in the back of his mind. Alex shakes his head, tries to clear it, but the feeling hangs around, and finally he just grits his teeth and keeps going. He’s never been much for being told what to do.

The doors down here are lead-lined steel, but the mutant--mutants, maybe, the guard said there were two of them--has ripped through them like paper. Alex finds his first corpse a few rooms in: a guy in a labcoat, neck twisted at an unnatural angle, half buried in foam from the smashed remains of a fire extinguisher. 

There’s more yelling, closer this time--two voices. Alex can’t make out what they’re saying, but it sounds like a fight, and then there’s another crash and a cry. He picks up his pace, sprints past wrecked security doors and warning signs as the _Keep Out_ vibe gets stronger.

There’s a corner ahead, but before Alex can turn, another body in a labcoat flies down the hall perpendicular to him. Alex dives back, barely keeping his balance as the body smashes into the wall with a wet thud. When no more are forthcoming, he holds his breath and inches his way around the corner.

This hallway dead-ends after forty feet at a windowless blast door with DANGER and SECURITY CLEARANCE LEVEL 5 and NO ADMITTANCE plastered across it in five languages, all vibrating in unison from the guard who’s just slammed up against them, his shirt tangled in the fist of a big guy in a trenchcoat. There’s someone else cowering on the floor--not a guard, but the way he’s curled up, Alex can’t make out any details. Finally, Trenchcoat pins the guard with one hand and turns to yell at the guy on the floor: “I’m going to count to five, and then you’re going to listen while I break his fucking neck, and then I’m going to break yours!”

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck._ The asshole has _hostages_. Alex is going to have to put down a fucking _raygun mutant_ with fucking _hostages_ in front of a fucking nuclear reactor--and there’s just one perp in sight, he realizes, which means the accomplice has to be lurking around somewhere, too. Alex creeps closer, tries to think of any angle, any plan that won’t end with all of them vaporized and half of New York a radioactive crater. Hank has said that Alex could probably metabolize an atomic blast, but Hank also thought whatever he got out of Raven’s DNA would get rid of his mutation instead of turning him fucking blue, so Alex is really hoping go the rest of his life without testing that theory out.

Instead of counting, Trenchcoat spins around, faster than Alex has time to react. Alex thinks he’s been spotted, but Trenchcoat goes for the guy in the corner instead, kicking him in the ribs. The guy on the floor cries out, and Alex is shocked at how young he sounds-- _a kid, this just gets better and fucking better_. He’d kill to have Xavier, or Hank-- _or Sean_ \--or, hell, even _Erik_ \--or even just a _gun_ \--right now.

“--Won’t!” the kid spits out. He’s cringing against the wall, arms raised in front of his face as if to ward off the next blow. Alex looks for a clear shot, but they’re too close together, and the hallway’s too narrow, and there’s no way he can hit Trenchcoat without pulping the kid and the guard and probably whatever’s behind the door.

“Your choice,” says Trenchcoat. He smashes the guard’s head into the blast doors with a sickening crunch, and before the body hits the ground, he’s got the kid by the neck, slamming him against the steel door. 

_Fuck it_ , Alex decides. He steps forward and says, in his best room-clearing-ice-cold-badass growl, “Drop the kid and step away from the door.”

Trenchcoat leaves his hand where it is, but he twists around with a mocking laugh. Alex gets his first good look at the kid’s face and feels his heart drop through the floor, because it’s _impossible_ , it’s _insane_ \--

It’s Scott.

Not Scott the way Alex remembers him, or Scott the age he should be--the Scott in Trenchcoat’s hand is maybe fourteen or fifteen: the same age he was in the autopsy photos. He’s got his eyes screwed shut, and his hair’s longer than it was in the pictures; and he’s thinner, all angles and sharp lines; but his face is unmistakable.

The first thing Alex thinks is that he’s snapped, left the better part of his sanity on the hotel floor in Omaha. He’s seen it before, in ‘Nam, guys who started seeing their kids or their girls in the green; one crazy motherfucker who’d run straight toward Charlie yelling _Mama, look, I’m home_. Alex had wondered with curiosity that bordered on jealousy what it’d take for him to lose it like that, because he’s always known exactly what he’d see when he did.

He grits his teeth, closes his eyes and shakes his head to clear it; and when he opens them again, Scott is still there.

If he’s not crazy--and he’s pretty sure he’s not, or at least no crazier than usual--his next best guess is that it’s Raven, fucking with him. But Alex has seen what Raven can do against a wall. Raven wouldn’t be hanging from this fucker’s hand like a party favor; she’d be choking him out with her feet while snapping at Alex to keep up or get lost. Which means that even if it _is_ Raven, something has gone horribly fucking wrong; and that puts Alex right back where he started.

“Put him down,” Alex says again, but he can’t keep the tremor out of his voice, and he knows that this time he’s fooling nobody. Trenchcoat looks him over with a great big shit-eating grin, like he knows how this story’s gonna end and he’s just waiting for Alex to make the first move. He’s relaxed his hold on the kid a little--Alex is doing his damnedest not to think of him as _Scott_ , because he knows it’s impossible, and he really can’t fucking afford to lose it right now--not enough for the kid to wriggle free, but enough for the kid to take enough of a breath to shout, “Run!”

Trenchcoat turns his attention back to the kid. “Fucking _seriously_?” The kid starts to say something else, and Trenchcoat slams him down to the floor and rests his foot on the kid’s neck. Alex’s sweatshirt is starting to smolder, and it’s taking all his concentration to hold the energy in, because behind Trenchcoat is Scott-- _not Scott, can’t be Scott, Scott is dead_ \--and behind Not-Scott is fucking _radioactive death_.

“You ungrateful little shit,” says Trenchcoat. “I pulled you off the street. I saved your freak life--I fucking _own_ you.” Alex can feel his hands starting to burn, taste the tell-tale tang of ozone in the back of his throat; and he holds his breath and wills himself to cool down, to hold out long enough for him to kill this sonofabitch with his bare hands; because Scott or not, it’s a _kid_ under Trenchcoat’s boot, and his face is starting to go purple. “And now look at the mess you’ve made.” The kid’s mouth works silently, and Trenchcoat leans over, bearing down harder. “What’s that? You got something to say?”

Alex explodes.

The force of the blast throws him into the back wall and stuns him for a minute. By the time he finds his feet, there are flames licking through the hall, and the door is melted to slag. Trenchcoat is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere an alarm is buzzing, and Alex wonders dimly if he’s doomed half of New York, and then decides it doesn’t matter, because _he’s just killed Scott_.

He’s standing there trying to figure out what the hell to do when he hears the a cough from the end of the hall, and for the second time, wonders if he’s hallucinating, because somehow, impossibly, it’s Scott ( _the kid_ , Alex reminds himself now that his head’s starting to clear, _not Scott, Scott is dead_ ). The kid’s hair is matted with blood and plaster dust, eyes closed, one arm bent wrong, the other wrapped around his ribs; but somehow, he’s not even singed.

“Kid?” asks Alex, still wobbling as he makes his way through the wreckage.

The kid’s head swivels toward the noise, but he doesn’t open his eyes. “It’s okay,” Alex tells him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The kid edges further away, eyes still squeezed shut. He’s hyperventilating, breathing in short, rabbity whimpers, and every time Alex edges closer, the kid scrambles back until he’s cornered himself against the wall. Alex can’t tear his eyes away from the kid’s face, because he _knows_ that look, the way Scott clenches his jaw and twists his mouth when he’s trying not to cry. It’s every shitty day at school when Scott came home and shut himself in their room without a word. It’s the headaches so bad that Alex would find him under his bed, huddled against the wall like he was trying to hide from his own body. _It’s Scott._

 _We’re probably about to die anyway_ , Alex thinks, and decides to go for broke. “Hey. Scott. It’s okay.”

At the name, the kid jerks up like someone’s just hit him. “Get the hell away,” he says, hoarsely. “‘m not going back.” 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Alex repeats. “Is your name Scott? Scott Summers.”

“I don’t care what he told you. _I’m not going back_.”

Alex figures any kid who’s trying this hard to be menacing while half dead pretty much has to be related to him. “ _Scott_ ,” Alex snaps. “I’m not--no one told me anything. It’s _me_. Alex.”

Scott’s face twists. “Alex is dead.”

“I thought _you_ were dead,” Alex tells him. “They said you were dead. There were _photos_ , at the orphanage.”

“This is _sick_ ,” says Scott. “You’re sick. My brother is _dead_.” He’s braced against the wall, struggling to stand. “You can tell Milbury I’d rather--”

 _Sanity can go fuck itself,_ Alex decides. “Scott, it’s _me_. I swear to god. I don’t know what the fuck is happening, or how this is even--you should be fucking thirty, you should be dead, but--”

The fight’s gone from Scott; now, he just looks wrung out. “Look, I’m sorry,” he says. “Obviously, you--you’re not who you think you are. Mil--someone messed with your head. He can do that, make you think stuff.” He sighs and scrubs at the side of his face with his good hand. “God, this is all my fault.”

“Scott--” Alex starts, but Scott cuts him off.

“Whoever you are, I’m really sorry. About everything. Just--um, I don’t know. You should go. The other way from however you came. I don’t know what he told you, but don’t go back there, no matter what, okay?” 

Alex is _done_. “Scott, for fuck’s sake. It’s _me_. Your asshole kid brother. I used to steal your pencils and chew the erasers off.” He thinks back as far as he can, tries to dredge up the things only he and Scott would know--the stuff he’s spent twenty-odd years trying to forget. “We shared a room. You had a million model planes, and you’d never let me play with them, which I thought was bullshit. You were gonna be a pilot.”

Scott doesn’t say anything, but Alex can see him listening.

“You, um. You always tried to teach me whatever you were doing in school. Fractions and shit. Math was your favorite.” _What else? Fuck._ “When I was like five, I ran into a door and split my face open and had to get stitches, and you were the only one who didn’t lie and say it wouldn’t hurt. You had a teddy bear named fucking Bear, and I used to give you shit for it because it was--”

“A cop-out,” Scott whispers. “Alex said it was a cop-out name.”

“It was!” Alex says. “Total cop-out. _Bear the bear._ It’s like naming a kid _Human_.”

“Oh, my God,” says Scott. “ _Alex_?”

“Yeah,” says Alex.

Scott bites his lip. “Am I--am I _dead_?” 

_That’s a really fucking good question_ , Alex thinks, but the kid in front of him-- _Scott_ , and by now he'd bet his life on it--is breathing, even if he’s also busted all to hell and the wrong age by a decade and a half. 

_I’m cashing in_ , Alex silently tells any higher power who might be listening. _Karma, or luck, or whatever the hell it is. I’ve never asked for a goddamn thing, but whatever I’ve done right, saving the goddamn world--all my chips. Whatever it takes._

“No,” he tells Scott, aloud as firmly as he can. “Nobody’s dead. You’re gonna be fine.” _Just this once--this one miracle._ He reaches out and puts a hand on Scott’s shoulder, and Scott startles at the touch, then winces and curls back in on himself. “Fuck. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Scott says through gritted teeth. “I don’t--look, I don’t really get what’s going on, and I still don’t believe you’re--but--” He touches his face and grimaces. “Did you see--is there a pair of glasses anywhere on the ground?”

Alex finds them lying a few feet away: wraparounds, bright red, made of something that feels heavier than glass. “They’re cracked, but not too bad. You should still be able to see okay.”

Scott runs his fingers over the ruined lenses. “ _Damnit_. No. That’s not--” He sighs, and lets his head fall back against the wall. “If you are Alex--and I’m not saying I believe you--how are you even here? Alive? I thought--they said you--he--died.”

“No,” Alex tells him. “You were--you were really fucked up, but I was pretty much fine. Do you remember any of this? You kept trying to make me play games, I Spy and shit, and sing camp songs.”

“That was _real_?” Scott looks stricken. “I thought--god, I thought I’d dreamed that. Or--or imagined it, or something. Were you--Alex was--were you were yelling at me? To stay awake?”

“Yeah,” says Alex. “You’d hit your head, and I kept thinking that meant you had a concussion, and if you fell asleep, you’d die. And then _I_ fell asleep, and when someone woke me up, they said you were dead, and I thought I’d fucking _killed_ you.”

“Jesus,” says Scott. “Wow. That’s--I _remember_ that. Some of it.” He runs his fingers over the glasses, again. “This is so messed up.”

“No kidding,” says Alex; and Scott laughs, and then winces.

“We need to get out of here,” Alex tells him. “You think you can walk?”

“Yeah,” says Scott. He manages to get about halfway to standing, braced against the wall, then revises through gritted teeth: “Maybe.”

“Want a hand?” Alex asks. Any other time, he’d just reach, but if Scott jumps the way he did the first time Alex tried to touch him, Alex is pretty sure he’ll go straight over.

Scott’s brow furrows like he wants to say no, but after another few seconds of struggling, he sighs. “Thanks.” Alex takes his hand, and pulls him the rest of the way to standing.

“Okay,” says Scott, after a moment. “I’m okay. I’m, um, I’m not gonna be able to see, though. Without those.”

Alex isn’t sure what to make of that. “They’re only cracked a little.”

“ _No_ ,” snaps Scott, surprisingly vehement. “Sorry. I just--I can’t. Sorry. I know it’s not ideal.”

There’s a strain of desperation in his voice that takes Alex straight back to pleading for solitary back at Leavenworth. He wants to ask Scott if his hunch is right, but Scott’s spooked enough as is; and anyway, the Mutation Talk is Charles’s department.

“It’s okay,” he tells Scott. “I’ve got you. Wanna try a few steps?”

They make it halfway to the first turn before there’s a hiss like pneumatic doors opening, and something _big_ slams into Alex from behind, sending them both flying. Alex starts to pull himself up and stops halfway, staring, wondering how hard he just hit his head.

Trenchcoat Guy is alive, for some value of the word, but he’s transparent, crystalline--like the Hellfire telepath, if she were brushing seven feet and built like a brick shithouse. He’s on Alex faster than anything that big should be able to move, dragging him back down the hallway by the remains of his shirt.

“Let him go,” Alex hears Scott say. “ _Please_. I’ll go with you. I’ll do anything you say. I swear.”

Trenchcoat tosses Alex with a flick of his wrist, and Alex hits the wall hard enough to buckle his knees. “Now, where was that spirit of cooperation when I needed it? Nah, kid, you had your chance. I got what I came for.” 

Alex makes it halfway to his feet, but Trenchcoat closes the distance in an instant and grabs Alex by the throat before he can yell at Scott to run. “Here’s how it’s gonna go, kid. I own you--you got that part right. But you’ve got a thick head, so I’m gonna make _real_ sure the message gets through this time.”

Alex tries to fight, but the hand around his neck is as hard and tight as a vise, and his vision is starting to grey out. Against the wall, Scott is still pleading: “Jack. Stop. _Please._ You don’t have to do this.”

Trenchcoat laughs. “Have to? You moron. I don’t _have_ to do anything. I do what I want--” he pauses for emphasis--”and right now, I _want_ to crush the life out of--”

“I’m sorry,” Alex hears Scott say.

There’s a noise--a weird, electric hum that Alex feels more than hears. The hand around his neck loosens, and there’s an earsplitting _crack_ , and then a sparkling crash like shattering glass, and the creak of stressed metal. 

Alex staggers back to the wall, gasping for breath, and opens his eyes to a river of red, crackling and warping past him. One hand catches the edge of the beam as he stumbles, and it’s like putting a finger in a socket--not painful, but a sudden, tingling rush as he feels himself starting to absorb it. There’s no sign of Trenchcoat, and it’s not until Alex glances down and sees that the floor is littered with something sharp and sparkling that he realizes what must have happened.

Across the hall, Scott has struggled halfway back up to his feet, braced against the opposite wall; and the red is so bright that it’s a moment before Alex is able to pin down its source.

“Scott,” he says, “It’s okay. You can stop.”

Scott closes his eyes, and Alex doesn’t even stop to think, just grabs his brother and half-drags, half carries him down the hall, diamond shards scattering under their feet.

“Fuck,” Scott says, as the cargo elevator crawls up, and before Alex can echo the sentiment, Scott bursts into tears. 

Alex doesn’t know what the hell to do, just stands there dumbly while Scott sobs into the wall until Alex can’t take it anymore and sidles up to wrap an arm around him. “Hey. Hey. Scott. It’s okay.”

“I _killed_ him,” Scott says. “I didn’t mean--I swear to god, I never wanted to hurt anybody. Even--”

“It’s okay,” Alex repeats, and then, because that doesn’t seem like enough, “It’s not your fault.”

Scott swallows, and asks, “Did I hurt _you_?”

Alex has no idea--he’s been running on adrenaline since he saw the scientist’s head smash in. He takes a quick inventory: he’ll have some impressive bruises, and one arm is full of glittering shrapnel that’s going to be a goddamn mess when it comes out; but for now, nothing is bleeding enough to worry about, and he’s pretty sure nothing’s broken. Whatever came out of Scott’s eyes with enough force to shatter diamonds doesn’t seem to have affected Alex at all. “Nah. I’ve walked away from worse. Anyway, Summerses are pretty tough, right?” _Scott, on the ground after the crash. Scott in the photos, chest cracked open, eyes empty sockets._

Scott--broken all to hell, but _alive_ \--rewards him with a shaky half smile. “I guess.”

The guard’s gone from the console; between him and the alarm, Alex figures they’ve got minutes at most before the real cops show up. “Think you can run?” he asks. Scott pauses a second and then nods, and somehow they make it out the door and the final quarter mile to the car.

When Alex slides into the driver’s seat, Scott’s fumbling one-handed with a ragged bandana. He finally turns to Alex, frustrated. “Could you? Sorry.”

Alex secures the blindfold behind his brother’s head. “Can you control it at all?”

Scott checks the knot and relaxes a little. “Not without the glasses.” His voice is thick and tired, and Alex can see him shivering, which means shock must be starting to set in. _Shit_. 

Alex digs his battered leather jacket from the back, and wraps it around Scott. He can’t stop thinking about the horrible symmetry of it: the two of them huddled in the remains of the parachute, the blood on Scott’s face, trying frantically to keep him awake. “Hey. Stay with me, okay?”

“Sure,” Scott mutters, sounding even more out of it than before.

“Shit,” says Alex. He has no idea how to do this. “We need to keep you awake. The blindfold probably rules out I Spy. Twenty questions?”

“Whatever,” Scott tells him.

Alex keeps the headlights off as he steers toward the back of the industrial park, watching distant blue lights flash in the rearview mirror. Scott’s braced against the seat, face gray, trying to lean into the shocks and potholes.

“It’ll be smoother once we’re on the highway,” Alex tells him.

“I Spy was bullshit, anyway,” Scott mumbles, after a minute. “It was too dark to see. I was just making stuff up to keep you from freaking out.”

“I know,” says Alex. “I mean, I kind of figured. You did a pretty good job, though.”

Scott doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he says, so quietly it’s almost inaudible, “Hey. Alex?”

“Yeah?” says Alex.

“Do you think it’s okay if--I mean, I know, realistically, this can’t--you can’t really be him--but I kind of don’t--I don’t really care if you’re real. I just want to. I don’t know.” He’s leaned into the door, facing away from Alex. “I missed you so much, and I just--do you think it’d be okay if I just--pretended? For a little while?”

“Yeah,” says Alex, once he’s pretty sure he can trust himself to talk without his voice breaking. “I think that’d be okay.”

“Thanks,” says Scott. 

Alex tries keeps him talking, asks questions about everything he can think of that isn’t the crash or the orphanage; and does his damnedest not to think about how old Scott is supposed to be, or the autopsy photos, or any of the million whispers of doubt echoing in the back of his head. _You owe me this_ , he thinks, over and over, repeats it like a mantra--to God, to the universe, to every pair of headlights that speeds past on the Hutch. _I’m cashing it all in. Every chip. Every penny. I’ll borrow ahead. Whatever it takes._

“Alex?” Scott says, breaking him out of his reverie.

“Yeah?” says Alex.

“What happened to you?” Scott asks. “You sound--your voice is wrong. You’re not supposed to be--how can you be _driving_?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alex tells him. “We’ll figure it out later.”

“Sure,” says Scott. “Yeah. Later.”

They turn off the highway a few miles later. “It’s only a little further,” says Alex, trying to take the hairpin turns as smoothly as he can. Scott doesn’t respond; he’s huddled under the jacket, face unreadable, breathing ragged.

“It’s going to be okay,” Alex repeats again and again. “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.” He doesn’t know which of them he’s trying to reassure.

* * *

When the doorbell rings, Hank is elbow deep in Cerebro’s guts, and he jumps so hard he almost rips out a handful of wires. “Alex?” Hank asks Charles. He doesn’t want to think of who else might be knocking at this hour.

Charles’s eyes narrow, then go wide. “Oh, _no_. Hank, get them inside; I’ll meet you at the infirmary.” 

As he sprints, Hank runs through every worst-case scenario he can think of: Alex, dying; Alex dead; Alex out of control. He detours to grab the first aid kid and fire extinguisher from the hall closet, and it’s not until he’s almost to the door that it registers that Charles had said “them.”

He finds Alex on the stoop, propped against the wall like it’s the only thing keeping him upright--directly on the doorbell, because even dead on his feet, Alex is still a first-class asshole. Hank’s just opened his mouth to make a smartass comment about it when he sees the kid and stops cold.

It’s not Alex’s jacket draped over the kid’s shoulders that freezes Hank in his tracks, although that would be enough. It’s that Alex-- _Alex_ , who almost never touches anyone unless he’s taking a fight to the ground--has an arm wrapped protectively around the kid and is talking quietly to him.

“Oh, my god,” Hank blurts out before he can stop himself. The kid jumps at the sound of his voice, then doubles over, clutching his side.

“Fucking _move_ ,” growls Alex, and pushes past Hank, dragging the kid along with him. Once they’re inside, Alex makes a beeline for the nearest wall, and sags against it, with the kid half collapsed into his shoulder. In the light, Hank realizes that the kid is in even worse shape than Alex: his lips are bluish, and the way he’s slumped against Alex, Hank isn’t even sure he’s fully conscious. Under the mop of scraggly brown hair, Hank can make out something covering his eyes.

“What happened?” Hank asks. “Is that our blip?”

But Alex isn’t even paying attention to Hank. Instead, he’s reaching over to brush the bloody hair out of the kid’s face. “Hey,” Hank hears him say. “Hey, Scott. Stay with me. Just a little further.” There are a few seconds of tense terror, and then the kid raises his head enough to nod wearily.

Hank’s running triage in his head--head injury, broken ribs, arm; and Alex isn’t in much better shape--when the name catches up with him. “ _Scott_?” Now that the kid’s got his head up, Hank’s got a better view of his face, and even with the blindfold and the dirt and the blood, it’s a dead ringer for the photos from the lab.

“ _I know_ ,” says Alex. “I don’t know _how_ , but it’s him.”

“Are you sure?” asks Hank. “It could be a shapeshifter, or--”

“ _Yes, I’m fucking sure_ ,” Alex snaps, loudly enough that Scott and Hank both flinch. “We can sort that out later. Scott, this bo--this is Hank. He’s a doctor. He’s gonna fix you up, okay?”

Hank opens his mouth to explain apologetically that he’s not really _that_ kind of doctor, except he sort of is now, and the months of training and residency Charles shoehorned into his head are finally starting to kick into gear, so he just says, “Yes. Of course. Let’s get you downstairs.”

* * *

Something is terribly wrong in Scott’s mind.

At first, Charles writes it off as a byproduct of adjusting to an unfamiliar psyche. Each mind has its own unique landscape, and while the metaphors in which they’re rendered cluster around a few common themes, initial immersion is rarely comfortable. Charles brushes off his unease and sets about getting his bearings.

Like most mindscapes Charles has explored, Scott's manifests as a physical location. Charles emerges in darkness, but as his eyes adjust, he can make out worn floorboards. There’s no furniture, but he knows with the same certainty that accompanies dreams that he’s in a house. Charles can see a dim light in the distance, and he’s made it barely halfway when he realizes what’s been worrying at him from the start:

_There are no walls._

Minds--every mind Charles has explored--have some innate defenses, structure, partitions. Scott’s is a wasteland, walls cut and blasted away. Charles looks for rubble, any sign of a struggle, but the modifications are precise, almost surgical. Aside from the rough scars in the floor and ceiling and an occasional chunk of plaster, there’s not much to see; so Charles does the only thing he can, and continues cautiously toward the light.

Its source is a single, bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Below is a square, drawn on the floorboards in chalk-- _like children dividing a shared room_ , Charles thinks--a grotesque parody of the mind’s missing boundaries. The square is perhaps ten by ten, with no breaks in the lines, no doors: just layer after layer of chalk ground into the floorboards. As Charles draws closer, he can see writing inside, dense and uneven.

In the corner of the square, Scott is kneeling, hunched over, and Charles realizes after a moment that he’s scrawling something on the floor, moving gingerly to avoid smudging the text under his legs. _jack is dead_ , Charles reads. _i killed jack find out who “alex” is don’t open my eyes don’t let them take me back don’t let them take me back don’t let them--_ If he registers Charles's approach, he makes no sign of it; Charles can't tell if he's unaware, or just indifferent.

“Don’t let who take you back?” Charles asks, aloud.

“Doctor Milbury,” Scott says, without looking up. “Who are you? You’re not--why are you here?

“My name is Charles Xavier,” Charles tells him; and even though the question seems ridiculous under the circumstances, he asks, “May I come in?”

Scott shrugs; but Charles can feel a rush of terror as he approaches the chalk boundary.

Charles sits down on the floor, outside of the line. “I’m not going to intrude without your consent, Scott.”

“Why?” Scott seems genuinely confused.

“Because this is your mind,” Charles tells him.

Scott looks up, suspiciously. His self-image is younger than his physical body--perhaps twelve or thirteen--eyes hidden behind glasses with thick red lenses. “I guess.” His question hangs unspoken: _What do you want from me?_

 _Build trust_ , Charles tells himself. “I’m a telepath,” he tells Scott. “Physically, we’re at my home, in Westchester, in the infirmary. Alex brought you here. Do you remember?”

Scott looks back down. “Alex is dead. I can remember that. I’m not _stupid_.”

“I know you’re not,” Charles tells him. “But I think that in this particular matter, you may have been misled.”

Scott shrugs, and goes back to writing.

“Do you remember what happened tonight?” Charles asks him.

“I killed Jack.” He traces back over the words as he says it.

“Was Jack the man in the warehouse?”

“Lab,” says Scott. “The warehouse was a front. There was a guard who wasn’t supposed to be there, and Jack wanted me to kill him, and I wouldn’t, but Jack killed him anyway. And then he was going to kill _Alex_ \--or whoever it is, and--I didn’t want to, but there wasn’t any other way.” He pauses, confused. “Why am I telling you all this?”

“Because we’re in your mind,” Charles tells him. “Things are--somewhat more flexible, here.”

“I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” Scott says. “Not even him.” His voice wavers. “I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

“I know,” Charles tells him. “No one blames you for what happened, Scott. I just need to ask you some questions. You were badly hurt, and we want to treat you as best we can.” He projects an image of Scott, back in the infirmary. Scott glances up, then squints in confusion. “Don’t worry; you’re in excellent hands.”

“Oh,” says Scott. “That’s. That’s extremely weird.” He doesn’t seem particularly concerned by the damage to his body, which is unsettling in and of itself. “Why can’t I feel any of it? If that’s me, I should be--what are you _doing_ to me?”

“I’ve set up a sort of buffer,” Charles explains. “Think of it like, oh, telepathic anesthesia. Hank had concerns about sedating an adolescent with a probable concussion.”

“Hm,” says Scott, and pauses again to write something down on the floor.

“May I have your permission to look around in your mind a little?” Charles asks. He wouldn’t even bother to ask, normally; but in any other mind, he’d have walls to guide him, to maintain some pretense of privacy. Maybe it’s the desperate futility of the chalk boundaries around Scott’s tiny space, but Charles can’t-- _won’t_ \--take access for granted. Not this time.

Scott answers without looking back up. “It’s not safe.”

“Is it safe here?” Charles asks him. 

Scott shakes his head. _What could make a child so terrified in his own mind?_ Charles wonders. He’s seen a plenty of damaged psyches, but never one so thoroughly demolished.

“What are you afraid of?” Charles asks him.

Scott shrugs. “Things aren’t--they’re not always where they’re supposed to be. Some of it’s really bad.” A flash of memory: _fire, and falling_. “And there’s other stuff--” Scott breaks off. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Charles tells him. “But I think that I may not have been the first visitor in your mind, and that perhaps whoever was here before was--” _A monster._ “--less concerned with your well-being.” 

This time, the memories swamp him like a flash flood: _sounds, overwhelming and incoherent. Something shattering. The nightmare sensation of fleeing something that follows, relentless, smashing through anything that gets in its way until there’s nowhere left to hide. The sensation of _tearing_ , brutal and sharp, and he can’t tell if it’s physical or psychic. A voice, calm and implacable and burning cold. Huddling into the space where a corner should be, while something dark and lurking and formless presses in from every side, terror sharpened by the recognition that the fear Scott is feeling isn’t exactly his own._

By the time Charles claws his way out of the flashbacks, Scott has retreated back to the far corner of his square, huddled in on himself. “ _I’m sorry_. I didn’t mean to--I told you. _It’s not safe_.”

“It’s all right, Scott. It’s not your fault.” Charles stretches his mind as far as it will go, feels for foreign presences, finds nothing but lingering echoes. Outside, he can hear Hank saying something, voice tight; and feel his rising sense of urgency.

 _We don’t have time for this_ , Charles thinks. He _reaches_ , and Scott goes calm. He’s still wary, but the panic is gone.

“All right,”’ says Charles. “Now. Do you think you can show me where to find a few things?”

Scott considers, nods, and, with a lingering glance over his shoulder, steps over the chalk threshold.

* * *

Scott doesn’t really know what to make of any of it. There’s a voice in his head, with an accent that sounds a little like Dr. Milbury’s, but this one says his name is Charles Xavier. Sometimes there’s a man attached to the voice, with a kind face and shaggy brown hair that’s beginning to go grey, and an endless stream of questions. At first, the questions are mostly medical history, and what happened in the warehouse, and what hurts, and how; and then there are a lot of questions about what happens when Scott opens his eyes. Scott answers all of them, sometimes without even meaning to: it’s like he _can’t lie_ , and he’s pretty sure that should bother him more than it does.

Later, there are other, different kinds of questions. At Xavier’s request, Scott leads the professor to the memories he can locate reliably: Alaska; Alex; the hospital; the orphanage; Jack. A lot of the memories are broken, the pieces scattered, and Xavier keeps telling him that it’s all right.

“You know,” Professor Xavier says, after one particularly frustrating fragment of Alaska where all the faces are missing, “I’m sure that we can piece a good deal of this back together, given time.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Scott tells him. It’s not that he doesn’t _want_ to remember his parents; it’s just that mixed in with _home_ and _family_ is all the worst stuff, the things Scott is guiltily grateful he can only ever glimpse in bits and pieces. 

Xavier says he can help Scott fix his mind itself, too; organize the memories so they’re less of a grab bag, and build walls that no one else can tear through. He can’t even imagine it until Professor Xavier lets Scott take a cursory look into his own mind, full of neat partitions and doors with actual _locks_ ; and then he wants it so desperately--safety, _order_ \--that the professor’s gentle admonition that it’ll take time, maybe a long time, hurts like a blow.

Professor Xavier says they’re at a school for mutants, which is what Scott is (which Scott knows), and what Xavier is (which Scott had pretty much worked out), and what Alex is (which Scott had been wondering about but hadn’t wanted to ask). Scott is in the infirmary--or at least his body is--but Xavier is keeping him asleep for now. The idea of being stuck in his own head scares Scott a lot more than whatever’s happening to him outside; but Xavier tells him that it’s okay, and he’s perfectly safe, and Scott finds himself actually _believing_ it, the same way he believes it when Xavier says that Alex is alive and real; even though there’s still a small part of him that screams that he should know better.

Occasionally, other voices drift in: arguments, conversations. Scott hears his own name a lot--sometimes in passing, sometimes because one of the voices, usually the one Xavier says is Alex, is talking directly to him. According to Xavier, Alex has pretty much moved into the infirmary, where he alternates between talking to Scott and picking fights with Hank. Xavier says that Hank is a doctor, and also that Hank is going to fix Scott’s glasses; which Scott is briefly glad about, until he remembers that he’s already decided not to open his eyes ever again.

When Xavier finally lets Scott wake up--he’s not sure if it’s the second day or the third--his first conscious thought is that he should have stayed asleep. Xavier has told him what to expect--broken bones and needles, a tube coming out of his chest and the weight of a cast on one arm--but it’s another thing to suddenly _feel_ it all, even through a haze of drugs that make him so nauseous that he spends his first few minutes awake throwing up. Finally, someone-- _Hank_ , he connects, once he’s heard the voice--does something to his IV; and gradually the world stops spinning quite so fast.

There’s someone else there, helping Scott up and holding his hair out of his face and snapping at Hank; and Scott recognizes that voice, too: “Alex?”

“I’m right here,” says Alex, squeezing the fingers of Scott’s good hand. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” says Scott, because even if his ribs are screaming and his head feels like he’s on a runaway boat, _Alex_ is there, and alive. “ ‘Sjust been. A weird day. Days?”

Alex laughs. “No kidding. You know how long you’ve been asleep?”

“No,” Scott tells him. “Maybe? A while. Someone was--in my head?” 

Now that he’s saying it aloud, the whole thing sounds more than a little crazy; and he’s thinking that maybe he dreamed up Xavier until Alex says, “Yeah. That was the professor. Sorry if that was weird. You were--we didn’t really know what else to do. You scared the hell out of us.”

“Sorry,” Scott tells him.

“Not your fault,” says Alex. “This must all be pretty confusing, huh?”

“Yeah.” The seasick feeling is finally gone, replaced by a vertiginous sense of floating in space. He wriggles his fingers, feeling for something--anything--and Alex’s tighten around them, pulling him back to the ground. “I mean, _you_.”

Alex laughs again. “Yeah,” he says, “You’re telling me.”

“You’re _real_ ,” Scott tells him. “You’re _alive_.”

“You, too,” Alex tells Scott. “Thought you were a shapeshifter or something, at first.”

Scott can’t imagine anyone wanting to turn into him. “They’d have to be nuts.” Now that he can finally sort of think, he’s got nothing but questions: “What about you? What happened? I wish I could see you.” It’s only sort of true: he’s also desperately grateful for the gauze taped over his eyes, tight enough that he doesn’t have to remember to keep them closed. “You sound--wrong. Old.” There’s more, he thinks, and struggles to remember. “You were _driving_. And you’re--this is all wrong. But you said--and it really is you. Isn’t it? _How_?”

Alex doesn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he says, “That’s kind of complicated, Scott. Maybe we should wait ‘til you’re feeling better?”

“I’m fine.” If Scott hadn’t been sure he needed to know before, he is now. Even if he can’t quite focus right, he _knows_ that whatever’s wrong with Alex is somehow the center of all of it.

Alex snorts. “You’re still a shit liar.” 

Scott doesn’t say anything.

Alex sighs. “Okay. Where to start? Do you know what year it is? Right now?”

“1975,” Scott tells him.

“Okay,” says Alex. “That’s. Huh. And do you, um, remember what year you were born?”

“ ‘43,” says Scott. “You know that. If you’re--Alex would know that.”

“Yeah,” says Alex. “No, I know. September first. See? I just--how old are you, Scott?”

“Fifteen,” says Scott. Alex doesn’t say anything. “What’s wrong?”

“Fifteen,” echoes Alex. “Christ. Okay. And, um, it’s 1975, right?”

“Yeah,” says Scott.

“And you were born in--”

“ ‘43.” He can’t figure out what Alex is getting at. “You already asked me that.”

“Scott,” says Alex. “What’s 43 from 75?”

“32,” says Scott. He’s always been fast at math. “Seriously, what’s going on?”

“And how old are you?”

“Fifteen. I just said--”

“ _And what’s 43 from 75?_ ”

“Thirty--” When it hits him, it’s like a sledgehammer to the chest. “ _That’s impossible_.”

“Yeah,” says Alex. “But here we are.”

It feels like the world is spinning out from under him. How did he never-- “This is so messed up. I can’t--how is this even--” He doesn’t want to ask, but he has to know. “How old are _you_?”

“29,” says Alex, gently. “I’m 29, Scott.”

 _Alex was born in 1946_ , he thinks, _and 75 minus 46--_ “I don’t understand. _How_?” He knows the dates, how old he is--knows on some level that it’s impossible, but the numbers just hang there in his head, and he can’t make sense of any of it, make the pieces fit together. He can’t figure out why he never _noticed_. “You’re supposed to be _younger than me_. I’m supposed to be--” He can’t bring himself to say the number out loud.

“I don’t know,” Alex tells him. “It’s fucking crazy. You should be in your _thirties_. And we found--” He breaks off.

“What?” Scott asks. “What did you find?”

“Nothing,” says Alex. “It doesn’t matter.”

“ _What am I?_ ” Scott asks him. “ _What’s wrong with me?_ ” Every time he tries to focus on the math, it’s like trying to force two magnets together the wrong way: the facts push back, slide apart. 

Alex doesn’t say anything for a long time, just sits there squeezing Scott’s hand. “You’re Scott,” he says, finally. “You’re my brother. That’s what matters, and nothing can take that away.”

* * *

Working for Charles means Hank is essentially free and funded to do whatever he wants: no more government requisition forms or grant writing, no more review boards. He’s got half a dozen experiments running right now, and half again as many on back burners. There’s genetic research on the table next to half-drawn blueprints and theoretical math; plus the Cerebro upgrade, and retrofitting the Blackbird--none of which he’s touched in days, since he’s been stuck in the infirmary pretending to be the one kind of doctor he’s definitely not.

“What the hell happened to him, Hank?” Alex demands, every time they have a moment alone.

“I’m looking into it,” Hank tells him; but when he sits down to sketch out a plan, all he can think of are the four-point restraints in Milbury’s basement, the way Scott flinches away from needles and freezes like a cornered animal if anyone but Alex touches him. Scott has scars too recent and too precise to be explained away by the plane crash or childhood accidents; and while he’ll talk to Alex, and even a little to the professor, he’s clearly terrified of Hank. Hank is well aware that--at least in human form--he’s about as intimidating as a wet noodle; which means it has to be because Hank is a doctor.

And that makes things more complicated, especially since Hank _isn’t_ a doctor, not really. He can perform triage and screw ribs back together; but it’s someone else’s expertise; and, more critically, someone else’s calling. Hank himself is a med school dropout, ostensibly for the same reasons he spent his late teens and early twenties blowing through Ph.D. programs like his peers ran through relationships: he’s a dyed-in-the-wool polymath, too interested in everything to commit for life to any one thing. The idea of segregating science into discrete disciplines and boxing them off between departments baffles Hank; his first dissertation committee by necessity included representatives from over a dozen different fields.

There’s another reason, too, though; one Hank has been skirting since he walked out of his first week of rotations. He doesn’t care enough; or, rather, he cares about the wrong things. Hank is first, foremost, and to the depths of his soul, a scientist. His first and strongest instinct is curiosity, and he barrels into every line of inquiry with the kind of recklessness that would be fatal in a clinician. 

It’s the same reason Hank generally avoids research involving human subjects: the part of him that truly believes, deep down, that prioritizing discovery over compassion isn’t entirely unreasonable. He can look at someone like Sebastian Shaw or Bolivar Trask and see not a monster, but a scientist overzealous in his study; and it’s terrifyingly easy for Hank to imagine a world in which he might make the same choices. As is, he knows it’s mostly a matter of luck--and Raven’s common sense--that the only person he’s so far managed to seriously damage is himself.

So on one hand, there’s duty of care; and on the other hand, there’s the puzzle. And the puzzle is what Hank gravitates towards: he looks at a traumatized child-- _Alex’s brother, for God’s sake_ \--and all he can think of are the discrepancies in the autopsy photos, the mystery of Scott’s age, the excitement of a new challenge. Over and over, he catches himself doing it; and then all he can think of is Shaw and Trask, the wrecked lab beneath the orphanage, that maybe Scott’s fear isn’t so misplaced as Charles and Alex want to believe.

“You’re not Shaw,” Charles tells him, when Hank finally works up the courage to confess. “And you’re not Milbury. The sheer fact that you’re this concerned should be enough to tell you that.”

“I could be, though,” Hank points out.

Charles sighs. “Of course you could. Hank, do you have any idea how easy it would be for me to reach into your mind and make you feel otherwise? About this, or any number of things?”

It’s an unsettling idea, but not altogether unappealing. “Maybe you should.”

“No,” says Charles. “Because the fact that I could do it--and even that I could rationalize it as serving some greater good--doesn’t make it right. It’s not the capacity for monstrousness that makes men monsters. If it were, there wouldn’t be a soul left on Earth. It’s the inability or unwillingness to recognize and restrain it.” He steeples his fingers. “You know, you might try talking to him.”

 _Easier said than done_ , Hank thinks. Even with telepathy, Charles never quite seems to grasp that not everyone is as glib as he is; how hard Hank has to work to make the kind of small talk that comes to Charles as easily as breathing. And Hank has even less idea what to say to a fifteen-year-old. At that age, Hank was mostly concerned with hiding his mutation while blazing through the groundwork for his first undergraduate thesis. If he and Scott have anything in common, Hank suspects, it’s the relative irrelevance of their putative peers.

Still--What would fifteen-year-old Hank have wanted, in Scott’s position--hurt, disoriented, afraid? He would have been desperate for data: to understand what was happening to and around him. It’s the same reason Hank started studying mutation, started studying _everything_ , really: to better understand the unfathomable world around him, his own unfathomable body. And it’s somewhere to start.

“I imagine this all must be pretty overwhelming,” Hank tells Scott the next day, as he’s checking his breathing. Alex is off somewhere with Charles--the first time in five days that he’s left the infirmary for longer than the length of a shower. “You know, if you have any questions, I’d be more than happy to answer them.” 

He’s not really expecting a response. Scott has spoken to Hank in more than a monosyllable maybe twice since he arrived, and Hank has never heard him ask anyone but Alex a direct question. 

So he nearly jumps out of his skin when Scott suddenly asks, “How long do I have to stay here?”

Hank scrambles for an answer that won’t spook the kid back into silence. “It depends. A few more days, at least--realistically, probably a bit longer.” Scott’s brow furrows, and Hank adds, as gently as he can, “You’re not a prisoner, Scott. But you were-- _are_ \--seriously injured.”

Scott picks at the edge of the blanket and doesn’t say anything.

“I can explain in more detail, if you want,” Hank offers. “I went over all of this with Alex, but I’m not sure how much you would have caught. You were pretty out of it for a few days.”

Scott nods again, chews at his lip. “Thanks.”

Hank pulls out his chart and does the highlights reel: fractures and brain trauma and pulmonary lacerations and the laundry list of complications they’re trying to avoid. Then, because Scott asks, they go through all the monitors he’s hooked up to; the drugs Hank has him on, and what each does, and why. Hank is pleasantly surprised to discover that he’s actually a pretty bright kid: acutely curious and determined to find out how everything works down to a minute level of detail. It’s a hunger Hank recognizes, and by the time they’ve meandered from medical monitors into circuit design, it’s almost a conversation.

“This would make more sense if I could show you the blueprints,” Hank tells Scott. He’s trying to explain the mechanics of the energy sink in Alex’s old vest and the challenge of replicating that function with microcircuitry. Instead, he’s getting a crash course in just how uncompromisingly visual most of his work is.

Scott worries absently at the blindfold. “Yeah, sorry,” he says. “I always think I’ll get used to it, but--”

“Always?” asks Hank, puzzled. “Has this--happened before? I thought your powers had just manifested recently.”

“I think so?” Scott says--more of a question than an answer.

“Which part?” asks Hank.

“The--not seeing. Not powers, I don’t think? I’m not sure when. Sometimes, back at the orphanage, I’d get these headaches, and--” He breaks off, visibly confused. “I don’t really remember. Sorry.”

Hank’s mind is racing. Had Milbury been trying to actively suppress Scott’s powers? There had been the glasses, which indicated that he must at least have been aware of Scott’s mutation--and then there were the photos, the empty eye sockets.

Hank realizes he’s gotten lost in thought, and files away his questions to discuss with Charles later. “It’s okay,” he tells Scott. “Don’t worry about it.”

The look on Scott’s face reminds Hank of Alex on the kinds of days that end with something on fire. “It’s not,” he says, tightly. “It’s like holding on to sand. I keep trying, but--” He turns to Hank. “What’s _wrong_ with me? I used to think it was just my brain being messed up from the crash, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

Hank doesn’t want to have this conversation--especially not now, and definitely not without Charles. “That’s a complicated question,” he says, cautiously. “There are definitely a number of--anomalies, your age being the most obvious.” He doesn’t mention the rest: the scars; the fact that Scott is healing significantly faster than he should be; the anomalies in his bloodwork; the coded medical file; the autopsy photos. And he has no idea whether Scott knows about the things Charles discovered in his mind: not just damage from the crash, but memories misplaced or forcibly excised with near-surgical precision.

“That’s so fucked up.” Scott scrubs at his face with the back of his sleeve. “Screwed up. Sorry.”

Hank laughs. “If ever profanity were justified.”

“I guess.” Scott doesn’t sound convinced. “I know it’s weird for Alex, too. Even if he won’t say so.”

“I think that Alex is mostly just glad to have you back,” Hank tells him. He’s not sure what to make of how seamlessly Alex has stepped into the role of de facto older brother and guardian. After two nights sleeping in a chair, he’s quietly moved into Scott’s bed--ostensibly because if Alex is close by, Scott will be less likely to hurt himself when he wakes up frightened and disoriented from the nightmares that seem to be a near constant; but more, Hank suspects, because after twenty years of missing his brother, Alex is reluctant to let him out of arm’s reach.

“I know,” Scott says. “I didn’t mean--I mean, me, too, but--he’s almost _thirty_. And he won’t really tell me anything about his life, but it’s pretty obvious it hasn't been--” His voice wobbles, and Hank desperately hopes he’s not starting to cry. “I was supposed to look out for him.”

This kid is breaking Hank’s heart by degrees. “Scott, do you know what Alex said, the first time he told me about you?”

Scott shakes his head.

“That you’d saved his life, in the crash. He said you were--what, ten? And you managed to hold on to him and kept him safe.”

Scott doesn’t say anything, just chews at his lip.

“Hey,” says Hank, “It’s, um. I’m sure you guys’ll figure it out.”

Scott sighs. “I still _miss_ him. And I know he’s _here_ , but I still--we used to be--” he breaks off.

“Were you close?” Hank asks. “Alex doesn’t, ah. Talk about his early life, much.” _Or anything else_.

“Yeah,” says Scott. “I know it’s--it’s obviously the uncoolest thing ever, to be best friends with your little brother, but Alex was so great. I mean, he was a pain sometimes, but--” He breaks off. “I used to tell him that nothing could ever get us if we stuck together. Even after--I _promised_.”

Suddenly, a lot of things about Alex Summers make a lot of sense. 

Scott sighs. “What happened to him? He won’t tell me anything.”

Hank’s really not going to dive into that one. “You’re going to have to ask Alex about that.”

“Ask me about what?” Alex appears in the doorway as if summoned. Hank’s briefly impressed with his timing before he notices the towel pressed against Alex’s arm, and the fresh bruises. His hair is wet from the shower, but Hank can smell ash and blood through the soap.

“Your life of adventure,” Hank says. There’s more he wants to add, but he bites his tongue for now, because he’s pretty sure that yelling at Alex would more than counter whatever incremental progress he’s made toward earning Scott’s trust.

Alex actually barks out a _laugh_. “It’s overrated.” He settles on the edge of the bed and ruffles Scott’s hair. “How’re you doing, Scott?”

“Okay,” says Scott, ducking out from under Alex’s hand. Hank has only ever heard him give two answers to that question--“fine” seems to be the one that indicates overwhelming distress, and “okay” covers everything else. “I’m glad you’re back.”

“Me, too.” Alex stretches out, and Scott sort of deflates with a sigh, like he’s been holding his breath the entire time Alex has been gone.

“Me, three,” says Hank; and because it’s becoming clear that no one else is going to fall on this particular sword, he adds, “Alex, I assume that you’re aware that you’re bleeding?”

Alex shakes his head. “I’m fine--I just tore some stitches. Just give me a minute, okay?” Hank knows it’s not really a question, but Alex isn’t bleeding _that_ much, and Scott is clearly on the brink of panic at the idea of his brother damaged, so Hank nods and heads back to the lab, leaving Alex to pick up the pieces.

The minute ends up more like an hour, because Alex insists on waiting until Scott’s asleep before he lets Hank take a look at his arm.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Hank demands, _sotto voce_ , as he slathers on iodine. He’s been wondering when the backlash would hit; now that it has, Hank supposes he should be grateful that it’s not worse. _Yet_.

Alex’s face is a mask of frustration. “I don’t know. Nothing. I wasn’t.”

Hank has to clench his jaw to keep from yelling. “Is this a game to you? Do you think I _enjoy_ this shit, Alex? Putting you back together? That when I say ‘two weeks,’ it’s to savor the dulcet tones of my own voice?”

Alex mutters something, too quietly to hear. 

“What?” Hank asks.

“I know,” Alex snaps. “I fucking know, okay?” The catch in his voice knocks Hank’s anger out from under him. “I just--I had to--I _tried_. At least no one got hurt, right?” 

“Except you,” Hank points out.

“ _I tried_.” It’s almost a plea.

Hank sighs. “Alex, you need to _think_. You’re not invincible. I don’t want to have to explain to Scott when you get yourself--” he sees the look on Alex’s face, and stops. They sit there in silence while Hank sets up and Alex slides a coffee cup back and forth across the table.

“Thanks for talking to him,” Alex says, quietly, after a minute.

“He’s a good kid,” says Hank. “Sit still.”

“He’s a really good kid,” says Alex. “I wish I could-- _Fuck, ow_.” He jerks back as Hank places a stitch.

Hank ties off the suture. “I told you to sit still. Did he tell you we had an actual conversation, with sentences and everything?”

“He said you’re going to teach him-- _nngh_ \--electrical engineering. You better not have been fucking with him, by the way.”

“Why would I--never mind. No, I wasn’t joking. He’s a smart kid; I’m just sorry he’s had to catch the brunt of my bedside-manner learning curve.”

Alex sighs. “It’s not you. You’re fine. You’re great with him. He’s just--he’s so _scared_. I don’t know what the hell to do. Xavier wanted to talk about about shit like custody, and I kept thinking, ‘I can’t be anyone’s-- _ow, Christ_ \--guardian. I hardly even know how to be a _person_.’ I’m-- _seriously, Hank, that really fucking hurts_.”

Hank almost snaps that Alex might have considered that before tearing his stitches, but Alex has his eyes closed and he’s looking pretty pale; and Hank’s not very good at being the bad cop. “Do you need to stop for a few minutes?”

Alex shakes his head. “I’m good,” he says. Hank watches his face and decides it’s close enough to the truth to keep going.

“Was the custody conversation what inspired you to rip out half your stitches?” he asks, after Alex has gritted his teeth through another dozen sutures.

“It sounds stupid when you say it like that.”

Hank chuckles in spite of himself. “It _is_ stupid. You’ll do fine, Mama Bear.”

“You fucking bozo,” says Alex, but he’s smiling. “How long have you been saving that one?”

“Until you couldn’t take a swing at me for it,” Hank tells him, tying off another stitch.

Alex snorts. “Good call.” He glances back at Scott, and his face falls. “How the hell am I supposed to do this, Hank?”

Hank shrugs. “Don’t ask me. I’m an only child.” It’s the part of the scenario he’s been trying not to think about--the fact that, until a week ago, Hank would have said that Alex was the closest thing he had to a brother, someone he’s been through enough shit with that whether or not they even really _like_ each other has become largely irrelevant. But now, of course, Alex has a real brother, and Hank isn’t sure where he fits anymore. He’s doing his best not to resent the hell out of that; and somehow, to his surprise, the whole roiling mess of jealousy and guilt seems to have congealed into fierce protectiveness. 

“You’ll do fine,” he tells Alex, again. “You’d walk backwards through hell for that kid, and you know it.”

Alex smiles, a little sadly. “I really would.”

 _These two are going to be the death of me_ , Hank thinks, and before he has time to second-guess himself, he reaches forward and pulls Alex into an awkward half hug. He’s half expecting Alex to hit him, but Alex just goes stiff for a moment, then hugs Hank back with his good arm, face buried against Hank’s shoulder. And then he just _stays_ , clinging on, not saying anything; and Hank sits there, awkwardly patting Alex’s back, because he’s not sure what else to do.

Hank’s just about to ask him if he’s okay when Alex finally detaches.

“I should--” Hank starts.

“Right,” Alex interrupts. “Yeah. Sorry.” He’s glaring intently at the floor somewhere to Hank’s left, face scarlet.

Hank places the last couple stitches, covers the whole mess in a layer of gauze, and passes Alex a couple Tylenol-3s. “Dial it back, Alex. I’m not kidding. I don’t want to have to do this again.”

Alex looks away, face tight. “I’ll--try.”

Hank’s not sure there’s more he can reasonably ask.

* * *

Scott’s supposed to be asleep, but as Alex flops down next to him, he asks in a small, scared voice, “Alex? Are you okay?”

The room is swimming, Alex’s arm is throbbing, and every time he even starts to think about the future, he wants to throw up. “I’m fine,” he tells Scott.

Scott mutters something under his breath.

“What?” Alex asks.

“You’re a bad liar,” Scott says. He almost sounds pissed off, which is a new one from him.

“I’m an awesome liar,” Alex lies. “But I’m not lying.”

“I’m not _stupid_ ,” Scott snaps. “You don’t have to--to _handle_ me.”

Being called out on his own bullshit is the only thing Alex hates more than being told what to do, and he can feel himself starting to swing hard towards mean. But it’s Scott, and Alex is being _good_ , so he bites it back and just says, “Sorry.”

Scott doesn’t say anything for a minute, and then he asks, quieter, “Are you really okay?”

“I’m really okay,” says Alex. “I just. Ah. Overdid it a little, outside.”

“You’re not supposed to be doing that,” Scott says. “Hank said--”

“ _I know_ ,” Alex tells him. “I fucked up. I already got the lecture from Hank. And more stitches--which, for the record, are even less fun the second time around.” In a sudden burst of fraternal responsibility, he adds, “The lesson here is that you should listen to Hank. And also that I’m a terrible role model.”

“I don’t care,” says Scott. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Alex tells him, “Me, too.” He’s surprised to realize that he means it. “So, here’s a thing. The professor and I were talking about--we need to figure out, um. What to do, legally. About you.”

Scott stiffens. “Sorry.”

“Hey,” says Alex. “It’s okay. We’ve got a few options, but it all kind of depends on, ah.” He can’t remember the last time he was this nervous. “Whether you’d be okay with me, um. Being your legal guardian.”

“Oh,” says Scott. Under the bandages, his face is unreadable, and Alex wonders if he’s made a huge mistake, if he’s overreaching. “Huh. That’s--um. Wow.”

“I mean, if you even want to stay,” Alex qualifies. He’s trying his best not to push, not to show how badly he wants this. “If not, we’ll figure something else out.”

Scott freezes. “ _I’m not going back_.”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Alex snaps. It smarts more than it should: that even after a week of reassurance, Scott can believe that Alex would even consider sending him back to the orphanage. “What the fuck kind of monsters do you think we are?” Scott flinches, and Alex drops his voice back down. “Shit. I’m sorry. I just--look, Scott, I swear to God, you’re never going back there. _Never_.”

“Okay,” says Scott. He still doesn’t really sound like he believes it, but Alex figures that’s a battle for another day. Or days, more likely.

“That’s part of why we have to figure this stuff out now,” Alex tells him. “So no one can take you away again. It doesn’t have to be me, if you don’t want. If it’d be weird.” He can’t bring himself to say the rest aloud, to tell Scott how important it is to him to keep them together. “I just--” _I don’t think I can handle losing you again_.

“How come it has to be anyone?” Scott asks. “I mean, I’m supposed to be, like, thirty, right?” He’s never sounded like more of a teenager, and Alex has to bite back a laugh.

“Except for the fact that you’re obviously not,” Alex tells him. “Especially without any papers. Charles--Professor Xavier--tried to get your records when you first got here, but so far, we’re coming up empty.”

Scott’s brow furrows at that, but he doesn’t seem entirely surprised. Alex doesn’t mention the rest, that Charles has tapped sources from local government to federal intelligence, and found _nothing_ : no birth certificate, no school records, no medical records. Omaha is as much a dead end as Anchorage: the Sheriff’s department burned to the ground less than a year after the plane crash, and DSS has no record of Scott _or_ Milbury. The only juvenile admitted to a local hospital on the night of the crash is an eight-year-old who arrived at St. Luke’s by ambulance, in stable condition and alone. Alex has been doing his damnedest not to think too much about the implications: that someone whose connections go almost as high as Charles’s has made very sure that no trace of Scott exists on paper.

“I guess,” says Scott, a little dubiously. “I just don’t get why--I mean, you’re grown up. You’ve got, like, this whole _life_. Why would you even want--” He trails off.

“My life is kind of shit,” Alex tells him. “Look, finding you was--” _the first thing in twenty years that hasn’t gone to hell in seconds_. Alex thinks about the duffel under his bed--always packed, just in case--that can hold 29 years of nothing with room to spare. There’s a blank space on one side, where he ripped off the tag that said _Summers_ in a fit of paranoia that they could somehow use it to track him and send him back to Stryker. He remembers when his number came up, how the only reason he hadn’t run then was that getting fucked up by something worse was the only way he could think of to stop seeing Darwin’s face every time he closed his eyes; only now he sees Sean’s instead, because if Alex hadn’t been so busy running away, he might have been there, and Sean might still be alive. He thinks about Hank, scared out of his mind and still the only person brave enough to consistently call Alex out on his own bullshit-- _You’d walk backwards through hell for that kid, and you know it_ \--and mumbles in a rush: “I just don’t want to lose you again.”

Alex is totally unprepared for the hug--the second one in as many hours, because apparently four days of Scott is enough to tear down twenty years of carefully cultivated _don’t touch me_ vibe. They disengage gingerly--between Alex’s arm and Scott’s everything, demonstrative gestures are solidly AMA--but Scott is beaming like it’s Christmas and his birthday rolled into one.

“You’d really do that?” he asks, like he can’t quite believe what Alex is offering. “You’d--I could stay? With you? For real?”

“For real,” Alex tells him, then forces himself to qualify, because the last thing he wants is to build Scott’s hopes up only to let him down. “I mean, um--it might be kind of tricky, but Xavier has a ton of connections, and he says he can make it work.”

The smile fades. “Tricky--because I don’t have records?”

Alex considers lying, telling Scott that that’s the only roadblock; but if he’s going to do this at all, he needs to do it right. “You’re the easy part,” Alex finally says. “Tricky because I, um, _do_. Have records. Including some, ah. Legal stuff.”

“Legal stuff,” Scott repeats.

“Felony convictions.” He can’t bring himself to look at Scott. “Charles--Professor Xavier is pretty sure he can, ah. That we won’t have to worry about it. But--”

Scott’s face is inscrutable. “Hm.”

“It’s not--I mean, they’re from a pretty long time ago,” Alex tells him. “I’m, um. I’m sorry. It’s not--it wasn’t anything too, um.” He cuts himself off before he can make any more excuses. “I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t have to--”

“What’d you do?” Scott interrupts, voice carefully bland.

He has to fight back the impulse to couch it in excuses. “I--ah. I blew up a couple cars. Abandoned cars. Mostly abandoned. And a police station.” The blast had cut through six holding cells, sent an inmate and two cops to the hospital. When they’d found Alex, he’d been curled in the rubble, sobbing, begging them to kill him. Instead, they’d taken away his shoelaces, shot him full of sedatives, and stuck him in SuperMax.

“With your powers?” Scott asks.

“Yeah,” says Alex. “The police station was an accident,” he adds, because it’s true.

There’s a moment of awkward silence, and then Scott offers, “I blew up an orphanage.”

Alex can’t help it: he cracks up, and after a moment, Scott joins him. 

“Summers kids are winners, huh?” says Alex. “There’s some more, but I think it’s all sealed records now. Stealing, smashing shit up, dumbass kid stuff. One time I broke a social worker’s nose. I should probably pretend to regret that in the name of responsible guardianing, but just between you and me? Totally worth it.” In general, bonding over being fuckup mutant delinquents is probably the opposite of responsible guardianing; but at the same time, Alex remembers how it had been when he first came here, sucking it up and holding in all the weird, awful system-kid shit that had been his normal. He’s already noticed how carefully Scott chooses his words, the kinds of questions he ducks answering.

Scott grins. “Yeah, I get that.” His smile drops away. “It’s not just that, though, is it? You won’t tell me anything. About you. I mean, I don’t even know what you look like anymore.”

That one’s easy, at least. “Nothing special. I’m, like, five-ten? Five eleven? I probably need a haircut. I always need a haircut.” _What else?_ “No beard or anything. I can’t grow one worth shit.”

Scott laughs. “Good. I don’t think--that would be too weird. I mean, you’re still, like, _eight_ in my head.”

Alex snorts. “Not quite that bad. I still get carded all the fucking time, though.”

“Is your hair still blonde?” Scott asks. “Mom always thought you’d grow out of it.” He frowns. “It’s so weird. Not knowing what you look like. I don’t even know if I remember it right.”

“Still blonde,” Alex tells him. “Darker than it used to be, though. Could you tell what I looked like if you touched my face or something?” He’s heard that blind people do that; doesn’t know how much practice it takes to get anything useful out of it.

Scott screws up his face. “Not really. I could tell if you were lying about the beard, I guess.” Now that he’s got a toehold, he digs in deeper. “What about everything else? Your life? Do you live here? Do you have--what do you do? What happened to you after--you never told me. After the crash.”

 _Shit_. “I live here, yeah.” The rest is more complicated, and it takes him a moment to work out where to start. “I’m kind of--figuring things out, right now. I taught here for a little while, back before, if you can believe that. When it was still a school.”

“Before what?” Scott asks, because the kid doesn’t miss a goddamn thing.

 _Pulling out all the stops, huh?_ “Vietnam.”

“Oh,” says Scott, and goes quiet for a minute, like he’s not sure where to go from there. “Did you get drafted?”

“Yeah,” says Alex.

“Sorry,” Scott tells him.

“Yeah,” Alex repeats. He knows he’s supposed to say _It’s okay_ , but it’s the one lie he still can’t quite bring himself to tell. Maybe it’s easier, with that one: not being okay about Vietnam seems to qualify as some fucked up value of _normal_. 

And Scott must pick up something in how Alex says it, because he doesn’t ask any of the questions Alex has been ducking and Hank’s been dancing around since he came back-- _What was it like? What did you do? Did you kill anybody?_ \--just leans into Alex a little harder, which Alex takes to mean that maybe they won’t have to do this one today after all.

“What about before?” Scott asks. “After the crash. What happened to you?”

“After the crash. Christ. It’s been a long time since I even--I got sent to a group home, and then got adopted by some people in Hawaii.” Alex decides he’s not even going to try to explain the Blandings until Scott’s old enough to drink. “What about you?”

Scott doesn’t even acknowledge the question. “Was that--were you okay? Were they nice?”

“Yeah,” Alex tells him. “They were okay. Their kid had gotten killed in a car crash, and they just wanted--I don’t know. It was really soon after everything, and it was all just really fucking weird.” He can’t remember the last time he talked to any of them. “I ran away a lot.”

Scott nods. “Me, too. I used to, um. At first, I’d.” His voice catches. “I thought they were lying about you being dead. I couldn’t remember the, um--a lot of things. I still--I mean, I don’t even really remember much about the crash. Just Mom telling me to keep you safe, and then trying to distract you, later. So I kept thinking you were alive somewhere, and I had to find you, because I’d promised, and--” Scott’s voice cracks. “ _I’m so sorry_.”

“Hey,” says Alex. “Scott. No. It’s okay.”

Scott shakes his head. “I was supposed to look out for you. And you were _alive_ , and I gave up, and you were--I let them--” His voice is shaking, and Alex can see tears starting to soak through the gauze over his eyes.

Of the two of them, Scott was always the cautious one--the one who insisted even before their parents that they always have contingency plans for if they got separated, if something went wrong--while Alex dove in headfirst. Alex wonders in retrospect how much of the dumb shit he’s done has been propelled by some lingering, irrational faith that Scott would be there to find him if he got lost, catch him if he fell.

“No,” Alex tells him. “Scotty, _no_. You don’t get to--none of that’s on you. You were a kid. You couldn’t have known. And you--Jesus, you’re the only reason I’m even alive, you know that?” He raises Scott’s hand to his face. “Feel that? I’m safe. I’m here. _You did that_ , okay? Like, twice over.”

“I _promised_ ,” Scott repeats. 

“Scott,” Alex starts. He’s been avoiding this conversation as assiduously as he’s been avoiding all the others, but he can’t think of any other way to make Scott understand. “You know I saw the orphanage, right?” The basement?”

The color falls out of Scott’s face. “ _No_.”

Once Alex starts, it spills out like an avalanche. “Do you have _any fucking idea_ \--we found _photos_. Of _you_. I hadn’t seen you in twenty years, and then--you were--you looked _dead_. I thought you were dead. That you’d been--that someone had--and then in the warehouse, you were--and you’re fucking _apologizing_? To _me_?” 

He doesn’t realize he’s yelling until he sees Scott’s cringing away again, one hand half raised as if to fend off a blow. “Scotty. Fuck. I’m sorry. I just--You were _ten_ , but I’m fucking _thirty_ , Scott. I’m a fucking _soldier_ , and I may be a fucked up mess, but I’m very, very good at--at what I do. And _I still couldn’t_ \--you had to fucking rescue _me_. Again.” 

This time he can almost see the crossroads in his head: on one side, how easy it would be to run--to the gym, to the bunker, to any wall he could throw himself at until he was too tired and hurt to think, or even nowhere at all, just _away_ as far and fast as he could. And on the other side, Scott, close, and fragile; and Alex would do anything to make this right. _Even stick around, for once._

“You shouldn’t still be taking hits for me,” he tells Scott.

“You’re my _brother_.”

“Yeah,” Alex tells him, as gently as he can manage. “Door goes both ways, Scotty.”

Scott doesn’t move. “I wish you hadn’t--”

“Hadn’t what?” Alex asks him. “Found you?”

“No.” He turns away. “ _Seen that_. You shouldn’t have had to--I don’t even--it’s not--you shouldn’t have--” He shudders. “And now you’re worrying, and you--you probably think it’s--that I’m--” He breaks off. Alex can see his shoulders shaking, and Alex’s chest aches, because somehow, after everything, Scott’s _still_ trying to fucking protect him. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”

“It’s okay,” Alex tells him. “We don’t have to talk about it again, if you don’t want.”

Scott’s voice is muffled in the pillow. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Alex tells him, again. He feels like a broken record, like Scott’ll see straight through the inevitable lie.

“You don’t have to--the whole guardian thing,” Scott says. “I’m really fucked up, Alex.”

“That makes two of us,” Alex says. “We’ll figure it out.” He tries to make his voice sound as confident as he isn’t. “What was it you used to say? When I was scared of storms? Like something from TV-- _You and me against the world_ , right?”

“World’s pretty big, Alex,” says Scott, without turning around.

* * *

Scott’s always known, in an abstract kind of way, that he’s what people mean when they talk about kids who slip through the cracks. Still, he’s never imagined it would be possible for one person to have slipped through so many. He pictures himself falling and falling and falling, through tiers of sidewalks lined up just right so that he can never quite catch his footing.

He’s pretty sure it isn’t just coincidence, either, even if he’s careful not to say so out loud. They already think he’s brain-damaged, which he is, and probably that he’s dumb, which he isn’t; and Scott doesn’t want to add “crazy” to the list, but he _knows_. It scares him more than anything, more than _everything_ , with a deep, grinding terror that smothers and muffles everything around him.

Even here-- _especially_ here, and he hates it, because they’re all so nice, and he doesn’t mean to be ungrateful--he can’t get over the feeling that it’s all lies. Eventually, he’s going to wake up back at the orphanage, and the sooner he rips that band-aid off, the better; except that after years of whispering Alex’s name like a mantra when they tried to convince him his brother was imaginary, Scott can’t quite bring himself to let go. 

Real or not, Alex _saved_ him.

The Alex in Scott’s head is eight years old, with perpetually mussed blond hair and a face Scott’s really worried he remembers wrong. In the hospital and at the orphanage, Scott used to imagine that someday he’d find Alex, and maybe someone would adopt them together and they’d be safe and everything would be okay again. And then he’d worked out that Alex was dead, and nobody wanted kids with brain damage and night terrors; that nothing ever really ended up okay, and _safe_ was just a lie adults told to make you drop your guard.

He’s never seen the new Alex, the one who might or might not be real. This Alex is a voice an octave lower than the one Scott remembers; a body that’s never still and radiates heat like a furnace. He always sounds on edge, like he’s waiting for something bad to happen; and it’s pretty obvious he’s been through some shit, even if he won’t say much about it. This is the Alex who came and found Scott, after everything; and when Scott wakes up fighting the monsters in his head, Alex is always there. He never laughs or gets mad, just holds on until the nightmares fade, and tells Scott that he’s safe and it’s going to be okay until Scott almost starts to believe it.

A few times, Scott tried to warn Alex--the new Alex--about how maybe none of it was real, and Alex did laugh at that, and said that if Scott was imagining all of this, then he really needed to get a better fantasy life. He also pointed out that Scott was still pretty drugged, and he called Hank over to confirm--which was embarrassing but also another point in favor of reality, because Scott can’t imagine Dr. Milbury ever volunteering that kind of information.

Scott hopes Hank’s real, because he likes Hank, even if sometimes it’s hard for him to get past the fact that Hank’s a doctor. Hank talks to Scott like a person, and he doesn’t mind if Scott doesn’t always respond. He explains everything he’s going to do before he does it, and why, and if it’s going to hurt; and he’s teaching Scott about circuit design, and how to play Risk and Diplomacy.

Hank’s also made Scott new glasses. Which would be nice, except--

\--Except now Scott is standing in the bunker like an idiot, frozen, glasses in his hands, his eyes--no longer pinned safely shut by gauze and pads--squeezed closed; and everyone is waiting; and he _can’t_.

 _It’s all right, Scott. You don’t have to if you don’t feel ready._ Professor Xavier has become a familiar presence in his head--not exactly comforting, but polite, careful. Scott has a fair idea of how easy it would be for Xavier to reach in and take whatever he wanted, change Scott’s mind, make him into whatever he thinks Scott should be. He’s still not sure what to make of the fact that Xavier _doesn’t_ \--someone with that kind of power, who instead takes the long way--but it makes him even more reluctant to disappoint the professor.

 _No_ , he thinks back. _I’m okay. I can do this,_ and feels a flush of approval from the professor.

He slides the glasses on, eyes still closed. They’re heavier than his old ones, and they fit more snugly--more securely, he hopes. “Are you sure I won’t hurt anything?” he asks, aloud. “I mean, if they don’t work. No offense.”

“The bunker is built to withstand an atomic blast,” Hank says from somewhere behind Scott’s left shoulder. “Well. Not at ground zero, but still. You’ll be fine, Scott.”

 _It’s up to you_ , the professor tells him again. _No one is going to force you._

Behind him, Hank murmurs something about a satellite dish and Alex snaps, “ _Over my dead body_ ,” and the professor says something reassuring in Scott’s head; and Scott stands very still in darkness of his own making.

There’s a hand on his shoulder--Alex--who leans down to say, softly, “Hey. Scott. You okay?”

Scott nods. The glasses don’t shift at all, he notes; that’s good.

“You don’t need to worry,” Alex tells him. “Seriously, if this place could get knocked down, I’d have done it years ago.”

“I’m fine,” Scott tells him. “I’m just--I just--” He can’t find the words to explain what he’s so scared of.

“Yeah,” says Alex. “I know. But I’ve been saving up like twenty years of dumb faces to make at you, and I really don’t want to waste them on Hank.”

It’s a ridiculous excuse, and they both know it; but it’s also a reminder of what Scott’s trading in if he keeps his eyes shut. When it comes down to it, he knows he’s already made his choice. All he’s really wanted for--as long as he can remember, really--is to see Alex again.

After weeks with his eyes bandaged, the light is blinding; and at first Scott worries that maybe the glasses aren’t working after all. Finally, though, his eyes adjust, and when the space in front of him resolves into a narrow hall lined with firebrick, it’s such a relief that Scott laughs aloud. There’s a gentle surge of pride and approval from Xavier, and a moment later, Alex asks, “So?”

Scott nods carefully, and reaches up to make sure the glasses are secure on his face before he lets himself turn.

And there’s _Alex_ , washed over in red. He looks younger than he sounds, younger than the 29 Scott had pictured, shaggy blonde hair, arms crossed. He’s _familiar_ , too: the same crooked smile, the same eyes--which means Scott hadn’t forgotten after all. It’s _Alex_.

Alex grins and raises a hand in an awkward half-wave. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” says Scott. Because it’s his brother, and there are certain standards to be upheld, he tries to deadpan, “Wow. You got _old_ ,” and totally ruins it by not being able to stop smiling.

“Ancient,” says Alex. “How’re you doing?”

“Okay,” Scott tells him; and for once, he actually means it. “I wasn’t expecting--I mean, you still look like _you_.”

Alex laughs. “Yeah. I keep hoping to outgrow it, but--” He shrugs.

“May I?” And then Hank’s there, too. He’s tall and lanky--even slouched, he’s a full head taller than Alex--and he moves cautiously, like he’s never really gotten used to his height. Scott stands still while Hank checks the fit on the glasses, fiddles with something on one earpiece, runs some kind of sensor along the edges. “No energy spillover. How do they feel?”

“They’re fine,” Scott tells him. “Great. Um. Thanks. Seriously.”

Hank blinks. “It’s really nothing. I can, ah, show you the blueprints, later. If you’re still interested?”

Hank’s been listing off the things they’ll do when the glasses are finished for weeks. Until now, Scott has done his best to file them away as impossibilities; to convince himself that he’s used to the idea of life without sight, that he’s okay with it; and for a second it’s like Hank’s offering to show him elves, or the sixth dimension, and he has no idea how to respond. “Sure, yeah. Thanks.”

Hank fidgets for a moment, then says, “Scott. While I have you down here, I’d very much like to get some readings on, ah, your powers?” He must see the look on Scott’s face, because he adds, “If that’s all right?”

The last thing Scott wants to do is take the glasses back off, _ever_ \-- _Jack, yelling; Jack, exploding into shining shrapnel_ \--but before he has to say anything, Alex comes to his rescue. “Not today.”

Hank looks like he’s about to protest, but then he glances at Alex, and nods. “I’m going to head up, unless you need anything else.”

“I’ve got it,” Alex tells him, then turns to Scott. “Hey. Sit with me for a sec.”

Scott settles next to him at the foot of the stairs. “Is Hank mad?”

“What?” asks Alex. “Oh. No. Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you mad?” Scott feels stupid enough asking that he half swallows the question, then has to repeat himself when Alex asks.

Alex blinks. “What? No. Why would I--?”

Scott can’t find the words to explain. “I’m not a _weapon_ ,” he says, finally. “I can’t--I’m just--everyone wants something. Dr. Milbury. Jack. _You_.” It’s not fair, he knows, but it’s _true_. “I’m not--I don’t want this. _Any of it_. I know it’s stupid, and ungrateful, but--” Even with the glasses and their feedback loop, he can feel the energy pushing from behind his eyes; and he closes them on reflex, puts his hands over his ears to drown out the smashing bricks and warping metal and screams.

“Scotty. No. It’s--no one’s mad. It’s okay.” He tries not to jump when Alex wraps an arm around his shoulders, and after a moment, manages to relax into it. Scott’s still getting used to--not so much being touched, he thinks, as touch being okay, not meaning something bad’s about to happen. 

Scott shakes his head. “ _You don’t know_. You can control it.” _Everyone_ can control their powers, and Scott can’t even pull himself together enough to have a normal conversation.

“Hm,” says Alex. “So, here’s a thing: in the army, they warn you about what happens, if you get captured. And they say the thing that breaks guys faster than anything is isolation.” There’s no humor in Alex’s laugh. “And I thought that was pretty funny, because, see, I had to fucking _beg_ for that, in prison. Three months in full solitary, which--they’re not supposed to do that, like, _ever_. People go crazy, really crazy. And even if you’re in the hole, they have to let you outside once in a while to exercise or whatever, but I wouldn’t even do that, because the thing is, I absorb ambient radiation no matter what, but it goes a fuck of a lot faster with sunlight. So, _yes_ , Scott, I fucking get it.”

“Oh,” says Scott, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “God. I. Sorry. Alex. I’m sorry.” He’s pretty sure he’s broken everything--that Alex is going to hate him now, that it’s all going to go to hell because he was stupid, he didn’t think, he couldn’t just--

“It’s okay,” Alex says. “Just--I really do get it, Scotty. Okay?”

Scott nods. “But--you can control it now. Right?”

“Yeah,” says Alex. “Usually. It’ll get easier for you, too. With time. And practice.”

If Alex had to learn, maybe Scott has a chance after all. “How did you do it?”

This time, Alex’s laugh is real. “Oh, man. At first Hank made me a containment thing that kind of--directed the blasts? And I practiced like a motherfucker. It was years before I even worked out how to channel it through my hands instead of just exploding.”

“What’re they like?” Scott asks. “Your powers, I mean.” He knows they’re something with energy, something explosive, but nothing beyond that: Hank just tells him to ask Alex; and until today, powers have been one of the long list of things that Alex doesn’t really talk about.

The glasses mean he can watch Alex talk, match up the pauses and vocal tics with the clenched jaw and furled eyebrows. “Plasma blasts. Heat, concussive energy. Hank thinks they’re pretty close to yours, at least at a cellular level, but mine are more--explosive.” He pauses and bites his lip. “You might not remember, but you, ah. Got hit with one. Back at the lab.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like I _saw_ it.” The lab is a haze, but he remembers the sudden wave of heat on his skin, the warmth and crackling in his head, behind his eyes, the same way it feels when he’s been out in the sun too long. The memory--any memory of that night, really--breaks off with something loud and sudden and painful, and he shudders and feels Alex’s arm tighten around his shoulders.

“It’s usually not like that,” Alex tells him. “I haven’t lost control that bad in years. Not since--” he shakes his head. “Hank thinks it’s because we’re brothers, how you absorbed the blast, instead of--” he grimaces. “I’m really sorry about that.”

Scott tries to imagine all the energy behind his eyes exploding outward in a violent burst. “Does it hurt?”

Alex looks surprised. “Not really. I get kind of fucked up if I try to suppress it too long. Do yours? Hurt?”

He’s never really tried to describe what his powers feel like. No one’s ever asked, not once they’ve seen what he can do. “Not--exactly? They feel--I don’t know. Weird. Scary.” He tries to think of an analogy, something that’ll make it make sense. “Like with migraines, sometimes you get this, um, thing? Before? That doesn’t hurt, but everything just feels really messed up and off, and you can’t see right? It’s not exactly--but it’s kind of like that.”

Alex nods. “Do you still get those?”

Scott’s surprised he remembers. “Yeah. Sometimes. It’s worse if--like you said. If I don’t, um, open my eyes. For a long time.”

“Like the last few weeks?” Alex asks. He sounds worried.

“No.” Lying about it is a reflex: Scott doesn’t even realize he’s doing it until it’s done. “I mean, I guess. It’s not--the glasses help a lot.” He doesn’t even consider telling Alex the truth, that the headaches are so much a default state that he only really notices anymore if they get really bad.

Alex’s mouth tightens. “You really need to tell me or Hank about stuff like that. I know you don’t like to, but--”

“I’m okay,” Scott tells him. “Anyway, even when it’s bad, it’s still better than--” Walls falling down. The people he’s hurt.

Alex sighs. “Scott, look at me.” It’s still counterintuitive, turning towards someone with his eyes open. “I know you think this is--that it’s gonna be easier to just--let it build up, even if it fucks you up or kills you or whatever, right?”

 _Yes_. Scott turns away instead of saying it aloud, because it’s pretty obvious that it’s the wrong answer.

“You don’t do that,” Alex tells him. “No. _Fucking look at me_. You don’t ever do that, okay? It’s not worth it. Anyone who tells you it is can go to hell.” There’s an edge of anger in his voice, something deep and ragged. “Don’t be stupid. But don’t live in a cage.”

Scott’s not sure what to do with that, so he just nods. It’s enough: Alex nods back, and Scott can see his face relax a little.

“Okay,” says Alex. “So. Hank’s upstairs, which means it’s just you and me down here. And we know your powers can’t hurt me, right?”

Scott nods again.

“And I’ve seen what you can do, structural-damage-wise. Was that full power, back at the lab?”

“Yeah.”

Alex grins. “Yeah, no offense, but there’s no way you’re even going to dent the bunker.”

Scott bites his lip. He knows it’s a sound argument, it’s just--even the _idea_ of it, opening his eyes-- “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he repeats.

Alex reaches over and ruffles Scott’s hair. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s the point. Glasses break. You want to learn to control this thing, you gotta use it.”

With the glasses off, opening his eyes is like a migraine aura amplified to the _nth_ degree; the same overwhelming pressure as a cluster headache without the burning-knife pain. After a moment, he can pick out wavering silhouettes, the shape of the bunker stretching ahead of him. He doesn’t let himself try to glance back.

“Are you okay?” Alex asks, from over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” says Scott. He wonders if his voice sounds as muted and warped to Alex as it does in his head.

“Stay still for a sec,” says Alex. Scott can see movement in his peripheral vision, and then a shadow edging into the red. By the time Scott can say, “Don’t--” Alex’s hand is silhouetted in the beam.

“Wow,” says Alex. “That’s really weird.”

“What does it feel like?” Scott asks.

“Pressure,” says Alex. “Something kind of--electric? Warmish. I’m definitely absorbing it--feels like sunlight, but more intense.” He turns his hand a little and says, “Hey, check this out,” and a stream of something _bright_ crackles out from his palm.

Scott lifts a hand through the red--he can feel the pressure, too, and it’s weird and kind of awful--and brushes his fingertips against the edge of the brightness. It tingles, like touching a live wire. “Oh,” he says. “Wow.”

They stay there for a long moment, hands extended, watching the streams of energy cross and crackle. Finally, Scott closes his eyes and slips the glasses back on. His head is swimming, and he feels like he’s just run a marathon, but the bunker is still standing, and so is Alex.

“See?” says Alex. “Not that bad.”

Scott blinks away the afterimage, the red cut through with glowing white. He’s still not really used to the idea of opening his eyes without anyone getting hurt; but maybe if he works hard enough at it--

“Yeah,” he tells Alex. “No. Not that bad.”

*

Nothing Alex has told him so far has remotely prepared Scott for his first glimpse at the Xavier mansion. It’s impossibly huge, insanely fancy-- _like a museum_ , Scott thinks, _or a cathedral_.

He’s been so busy gawking at the room itself that he almost misses Professor Xavier until he hears a familiar laugh. “It is rather ridiculous, isn’t it?” 

“Sorry.” Scott can feel himself blushing. “I didn’t mean--there’s just--it’s really big.” The little bits of normalcy--tea cups on tables, a half-folded newspaper, a jacket thrown over the back of a chair--stick out like interlopers from another universe. He can’t believe people actually live here.

“Oh, it’s a monstrosity,” Xavier tells him cheerfully. “The neighbors are _still_ scandalized. Although it’s terribly useful for impressing prospective students. Well. Their parents.” He beams at Scott. “I very much hope you’ll make yourself at home here, at least for as long as you want to stay.”

“Thanks,” Scott tells him. “For everything, I mean, you’ve been so--” He doesn’t even know where to start. “I don’t want to. Um. Impose.” It’s hard not to stare--at the room, and at Xavier himself. 

The version of Professor Xavier who’s appeared in Scott’s head is a few years younger, hair thicker, always in motion--pacing, or bouncing on the balls of his feet like he’s preparing for a leap. Scott wonders if the professor has always been like that, or if it’s a way of compensating for the chair that Scott is trying his best not to gape at. Their mannerisms are the same, though: the inflection, the way Xavier angles his chin when he tells Scott, “Nonsense. You’re ever so welcome.” 

“Thank you,” Scott repeats. “I--seriously, um. This is--” He doesn’t have words for it--for any of this.

Xavier claps his hands together like a kindergarten teacher. “So! You should be celebrating. Alex, you might take him to see the grounds--the gardens won’t be much to look at yet, but there’s the lake. Or there’s a cinema, in town. Here, I’ll find the listings.” He retrieves a folded newspaper section, and passes it to Alex, who shakes it open

“ _Escape to Witch Mountain_. Let’s see--” Alex bursts out laughing. “Yeah, I think we’ll pass.”

Xavier must pull whatever the joke is out of Alex’s mind, because a moment later, he chuckles, too. “What?” Scott asks. Alex passes over the paper. Scott gets as far as _A pair of orphaned siblings with extraordinary powers_ ; and maybe it’s because he’s tired, or the sheer overwhelming _everything_ of it all--the glasses, and the mansion, and all the rest--but suddenly it’s the funniest thing in the world. He’s laughing so hard he can’t breathe, so hard he half falls into Alex, who cracks up all over again. And then Hank stomps over to snatch the paper out of Alex’s hand so he can see what’s so funny, which sets them both off _again_.

And just for a minute--for the first time since he’s gotten here, maybe for the first time since the crash--everything feels right. It’s the two of them, together--the way they’re supposed to be--and it doesn’t even matter that they’re the wrong ages; or that Scott keeps one hand on his new glasses the whole time, just in case.

* * *

Alex and Charles may be what Hank thinks of as family these days, but he’s long since come to terms with the fact that--like his biological family--neither of them will ever really quite _get_ him. Certainly, Hank and Alex are close; certainly, Charles is brilliant and kind. But Alex is also impatient and unpredictable, and Charles is constitutionally incapable of sharing a room without conversation.

Scott is different.

He’s curious and clever--not as clever as Hank; but then, no one is as clever as Hank--but Scott also understands companionable silence in ways that neither Charles nor Alex have ever grasped. Charles enjoys the ingenuity of the Blackbird, and Alex appreciates its utility; but Scott falls utterly and irrevocably in love with the plane from the first moment he sees it, and spends the next week poring over manuals and blueprints, peppering Hank with questions, begging to help with maintenance. Charles gritted his teeth through a single game of Risk before politely bailing, and Alex lasted all of a round and a half before declaring it a form of cruel and unusual punishment; and Hank is fully expecting the same from Scott, but Scott _loves_ Risk, and Diplomacy, and all the other strategy and logic games Hank has long since been resigned to playing only against himself. He’s _good_ , too. Hank creams him in their first game of Risk, but only barely manages to eke out a narrow victory in the second. They stalemate in the third; and every game after that, the board belongs to Scott.

He’s even beginning to come out of his shell a little. He’s still quiet and jumpy, but he asks questions, and laughs, and sometimes even breaks off from Alex on his own to trail after Hank like a red-bespectacled duckling, to Hank’s bemused delight.

But for all that Scott has become a friend, he remains a mystery. Hank analyzes blood and tissue samples, X-rays, brain scans. He cross-references his own findings with the autopsy photos and what little he’s been able to decipher from the medical files, traces internal discrepancies; and as he progresses, he becomes more and more concerned by what he finds.

If there’s anything Hank knows about genetics, it’s the almost infinite capacity for variation: the endless spectrum of ways four bases can combine and express. The code is flexible, _mutable_ ; and Hank has learned in the course of his studies, his career, his _life_ , that, when it comes to genetics, very little is truly impossible.

Scott Summers is impossible.

“I don’t care what you pulled from his mind,” Hank tells the professor. “He simply _cannot_ be who he says he is.” At a casual glance, Scott is seventeen years too young to be Alex’s long-lost brother, a discrepancy Hank concedes may be attributable to the intricacies of Scott’s mutation, or the meddling of an unscrupulous scientist. Below the surface, however--at a cellular level--Scott isn’t even fifteen.

“Fast healing can be a byproduct of any number of mutations,” Charles points out, when Hank brings his concerns to the professor.

“I’m not just talking about his bones,” Hank says. It hasn’t even been a month since Scott first came to the mansion, since Hank screwed his ribs back together and set his arm; and the fractures are no longer discernible even on X-rays. “This isn’t Alex bouncing back quickly from injuries or looking young for his age; and from everything I’ve seen, they metabolize energy almost identically. What’s happening with Scott--this is something else.”

He walks Charles through what he’s found: stem cells that should have long since differentiated; growth patterns that speak to development condensed--not extended, as Scott’s apparent age should indicate.

“His scars are wrong,” Hank explains. “Even if you look only at relative age--entirely discount the fact that he should be in his thirties--his injuries from the plane crash should be around five years old. But none of the scars that match the ones on the autopsy photos reflect either that age or interaction with concurrent growth and development; and I’d bet my diploma that the rest were all sustained in the last three years. Superficially, his brain scans indicate an adolescent with a roughly five-year-old traumatic brain injury as well as abnormalities consistent with a history of severe abuse; but on closer inspection, some of what appears to be physical trauma is in fact a set of developmental abnormalities that uncannily mimic the the brain injury he allegedly sustained. And genetically--”

Genetically, Scott is like nothing Hank has ever encountered. He’s definitely Alex’s biological sibling--that much, at least, lines up--and he’s definitely a mutant; but Hank keeps stumbling across sequences that defy explanation, strings of junk DNA that recur and repeat with more regularity than natural variation could possibly produce. 

“Could someone have altered his DNA?” Charles asks. “Rewritten his biology at a genetic level?” _Like you did_ hangs heavy and unspoken between them.

Hank shakes his head. “What I did to myself--what I was trying to do with Raven’s DNA--was a stab in the dark. This is precise, and far beyond our current understanding of either genetic sequencing or any existing means of altering it. What you’re describing is--and I do not use this word lightly--impossible.”

“What else could have caused it?” Charles wants to know.

“I don’t know,” Hank admits. “I’ve run every hypothesis I could think of, including several that I recognize as frankly preposterous, and I’m no closer to an answer than I was when I started.”

Charles steeples his fingers, and Hank braces for a lecture. Instead, Charles asks, “Have you spoken to Alex about any of this?”

Hank shakes his head. “I’ve told him that there are anomalies I’m still looking into. No details, yet.” He’s tried to imagine Alex’s response to even a fraction of what he’s just told Charles, and every scenario ends with something on fire--usually Hank.

Charles nods. “How do you think we should proceed?”

It’s the question Hank has been hoping for. He tries to keep his voice even, not to sound too excited as he makes his pitch. “I want to consult an expert,” he tells Charles. “I won’t disclose any identifying information, or the larger picture,” he rushes to add, because Charles is already opening his mouth to protest. “Just a few key details.”

“Do you have someone in mind?” Charles asks. Surely he must know the answer already: the name has been running through Hank’s head for days now.

“Nathaniel Essex just accepted a genetics chair at Harvard,” Hank tells him.

“Essex?” Charles pauses, brow furrowed. “The name is familiar, but I don’t recall the man or his work.”

Hank can’t restrain himself from gushing. “ _Groundbreaking_ doesn’t even begin to cover it. It’s all theoretical so far, but his ideas about genetic resequencing are years--maybe decades--ahead of the rest of the field. I’ll give you some of his papers. You’ll love him, he’s exactly your sort of madman.”

Charles laughs. “Am I that predictable? Well, I shall very much look forward to seeing your madman’s work.” His smile fades. “But tread lightly, Hank. Nothing that will compromise the school. And remember--whatever else Scott may be, he’s still a _child_ , one who has been exploited and abused.”

 _By men like me_ , Hank thinks. Scott will talk and joke with Hank in the kitchen, but in the infirmary and the lab, he still flinches away from every touch; and every time, Hank remembers the child-size restraints in Milbury’s house of horrors, the look on Charles’s face the first time he delved past the surface of Scott’s memory.

He takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to compromise his safety, Charles. But we need to know what he is--for his own sake, if nothing else.”

Charles frowns. “And you really believe that Essex can shed some light on this?”

Hank nods. “If anyone can make heads or tails of this--see the pattern we’re missing--it’s him.”

Hank calls Harvard the next day, and leaves a message with the department secretary. He has a story prepared--a paper he’s hoping to get Dr. Essex to consult on, something on retroactive extrapolation of X-gene variations based on global symptomatic manifestation--but as it turns out, he doesn’t need it. Essex calls back himself to tell Hank in a crisp British accent that he’s terribly impressed with Hank’s work--he uses the word _genius_ , and it’s all Hank can do not to burst into nervous laughter on the phone. Even better, Essex says he’s happy to help with anything Hank might need. In fact, he’s got the next morning free, if it’s not too much trouble for Hank to drive to Cambridge.

Hank--who would happily drive to the moon for a conversation with Nathaniel Essex--assures him that it won’t be any trouble at all.

Nothing about Essex is what Hank is expecting. Scientists, even Harvard scientists, tend toward the vague and disheveled--God knows Hank himself does--but Essex is flawlessly polished, impeccably dressed in a black suit, red silk tie tacked in place by a glittering red gem. His face is elegant--compelling, even--with preternaturally pale skin and very red lips, and a smile that never quite seems to reach his eyes. There’s something vaguely unsettling about him, but Hank can’t pinpoint precisely what, and quickly chalks it up to his own nerves. 

“You’re with the Xavier Institute these days, yes?” Essex asks, as he ushers Hank into his office. “The private sector--I must admit, I’m a bit jealous. Even on the vanguard, the academy is unforgivably hidebound.”

“Terribly,” Hank rushes to agree. He’s heard that Essex left Oxford on thin ice, but he’s never kept current on gossip in the field, and now that he’s sequestered at Xavier’s, the ivory tower might as well be a literal fortress.

“Institutional affiliation has its uses,” Essex continues, leaning back in his chair. “Legitimacy, laurels. But I think we both know that the real progress is happening outside the scrutiny of boards of trustees, hm?”

“Um,” says Hank. “Yes? Maybe? I do have oversight.” It’s sort of true: he assumes that Charles would stop him if he wandered too far into the deep end. Maybe.

“Of course,” says Essex, smoothly. “Forgive me my hubris: the necessity of being answerable to a roomful of men who cannot even begin to fathom my real work is--well. An indignity to which I am temporarily resigned, at least in these halls. And you hardly came all this way to listen to me complain.”

“Oh,” says Hank. “No. It’s, um. It’s fine. You’re--I mean, in your shoes, I’m sure I would be--it must be frustrating. For someone with your, um, vision.”

Essex smiles. “Don’t sell yourself short, Dr. McCoy. Now: you had questions, I think?”

He listens, hands folded on his desk, as Hank goes through a series of hypotheticals--cellular regeneration, decelerated aging, developmental irregularities.

“I’m impressed with the specificity of your scenario, Dr. McCoy,” Essex says, when Hank has finished. “How, exactly, did you arrive at that particular combination?”

“It’s not a, um, combination, really,” Hank qualifies. He’s pretty sure he presented the models the way he and Charles had discussed--as a scattering of hypothetical symptom sets. “Just, um. We’ve been running some simulations, tracking a set of variables. All hypothetical, at this stage. Speculation, really.”

Essex smiles. “Speculation. I see.”

“We’re, ah, casting a wide net. The variables are, um--” Hank knows he’s babbling. “Really, there are, ah, so many, it’s hard to--the field of probable outcomes, and--”

“Dr. McCoy,” Essex interrupts. His voice is mild, almost gentle. “We are men of science, you and I. Men of _truth_. Lies do not become us.”

“I’m not--I didn’t--” Hank imagines Essex’s stare boring into his mind, and he wonders for a moment if Essex might be a telepath. “How?”

Essex stands. “I’m familiar with the case.” He smiles again, and this time Hank sees the glint of teeth from beneath unnaturally red lips. “You have strayed _very_ far out of your depth, Dr. McCoy. It’s a good thing you came to me.”

*

It’s a good thing he drove up, Hank thinks. A good thing that he borrowed one of Charles’s cars; one without a stack of papers in the front seat. A good thing that Dr. Essex has the afternoon free.

In the back of his mind, there’s a slight tug, as if there’s something he’s forgetting. “I should call,” he says, aloud, as he pulls out of the parking lot. “Let them know we’re on the way.”

“Nonsense,” says Essex, beside him. “That won’t be necessary.”

He’s right, Hank realizes. That won’t be necessary. “I appreciate you making the time,” he tells Dr. Essex. “I can’t tell you how much I admire your work.”

“Of course,” says Essex, and Hank can’t just hear the smile in his voice, he can feel it, sharp and quick, in the base of his skull. “I assure you, the pleasure is mine.”

* * *

 _It’s okay_ , Scott tells himself silently, the second he jerks awake. He’s still half in the nightmare, head muddy, heart racing; but he’s been trying to grind the words into habit, make them stick. _You’re in Westchester, at Professor Xavier’s house. Alex is here. Alex is alive. You’re alive._

He’s supposed to be saying _I_ , not _you_ , but it’s easier to believe the words if he imagines them in Professor Xavier’s voice, the way he repeated them to Scott the first time. “This is a foundation,” the professor had said. “If we’re going to rebuild, we need solid ground to work on.”

“What if it’s wrong?” Scott had asked. “How do I know? That it’s safe? What if I say it and it turns out the house is on fire, or--”

The professor had laughed. “I suppose that in that context, _safe_ would have to mean _capable of handling contingencies_. Which I assure you that we are.”

There are two more sentences, and they’re the hardest ones--hard enough that most days, Scott can’t quite bring himself to think them. He tries the first one: _Alex is safe._ That one’s easier because it’s verifiable, at least right now: he can hear Alex mumbling in his sleep across the room, the same way he used to when they were kids.

(“There’s more than enough space,” Professor Xavier had told them. Scott hadn’t said anything: he had known that Alex was used to privacy, and Alex had already uprooted his whole life around Scott; but Alex had laughed, and told the professor, “We’ll keep that in mind,” and dragged a second bed into his room. Scott still hasn’t told Alex how grateful he is for that, and for everything--all the questions Alex hasn’t asked, even though he must wonder; all the things Alex just seems to _know_. They’ve both got secrets, and for once, that seems like it’s actually okay, like they’ve got time to take things slow. It’s not a luxury Scott is used to.)

 _Alex is safe_ , he repeats, imagining the professor’s voice. And now Scott’s found him again--or he’s found Scott, but the important thing is that they’re back together--and he’s not going to let anything else happen to Alex, not now, not ever. _It’s okay. You’re in Westchester, at Professor Xavier’s house. Alex is here. Alex is alive. Alex is safe. You’re here. You’re alive--_ He can’t do it.

One more try: _It’s okay. You’re in Westchester, at Professor Xavier’s house. Alex is here. Alex is alive. Alex is safe. You’re here. You’re alive._

 _You’re safe_ , Scott tells himself; imagines Professor Xavier telling him. There may not be real walls in his mind--not yet--but there are walls around him: old, and sturdy. There’s the professor, and Hank, and they’ve both promised; and he reminds himself that he’s trying to trust them. And there’s Alex.

He still doesn’t really believe it, but maybe saying it is enough. _Alex is safe_ , he repeats, imagining the professor’s voice. _It’s okay. You’re in Westchester, at Professor Xavier’s house. Alex is here. Alex is alive. Alex is safe. You’re here. You’re alive. You’re safe._

It’s a start.

*

As far as Scott has been able to work out, Professor Xavier’s house exists in a state of continual chaos. There’s no real schedule--people sleep when they sleep and get up when they get up, and if they happen to intersect in the kitchen at mealtimes, it’s more by coincidence than design.

Scott is left mostly to his own devices. For the first few days he had the run of the mansion, he had mostly trailed around after Alex; but gradually, he’s begun to venture off on his own. Now, it’s almost starting to feel routine: strategy games with Hank; helping Alex with the Dart (which Scott has grave doubts will ever run again, but it’s still nice to do something with Alex; and outside, tinkering under the hood, Alex almost seems relaxed). Meetings with the professor aren’t _nice_ , exactly--he may have accepted the mansion as safe, but Scott’s own mind still feels like a minefield--but he’s trying to trust Xavier, to trust that whatever he’s doing, there’s a purpose behind it; that they really are making some kind of progress, even if it’s nothing Scott can see. 

Today, though, Hank has a meeting out of town, so Scott spends the morning in the hangar, reading in the shadow of the Blackbird. He’s been studying the maintenance manuals, learning how all the pieces fit, trying to tease back out whatever he can remember from _before_ about things like pitch and yaw and roll.

Alex and the professor have both brought up school, or equivalency testing, but nothing has materialized yet, or at least nothing formal. Scott’s not looking forward to finding out exactly how far behind he’s fallen--he doubts they’ve added psychic defenses or SR-71 landing gear to the SATs--but the idea of worrying about school feels so _normal_ that it makes him laugh aloud, and he jumps at the sound of his own voice, loud and sharp in the cavernous hangar.

And that’s a reminder that it’s not that simple: that _normal_ is really only something he gets when he lets himself forget. Normal is school, and parents, and a lot of things Scott can no longer even identify as anything but their absence, formless void where he knows _something_ is supposed to be, even if he’s not sure what. Normal isn’t red-tinted, a pair of thin lenses and some microcircuitry the only things between him and the end of the world. Normal doesn’t jump at every sudden sound or flinch at every touch. Normal means feeling like a person, not some broken, jagged _thing_ ; having an age that adds up right; being able to remember.

Hank and the professor are working on the bigger questions--what happened to Scott, why he’s all wrong--but Scott can’t stop focusing on the smaller, more personal one--how he didn’t notice. Even now, when he tries to do the math, the dates skip and slide in his mind, and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t quite make them stick. He knows on some level that he’s impossible-- _What’s 43 from 75?_ \--but the impossibility is fleeting and slippery, an object he can glimpse only out of the corner of his eye that disappears when he tries to face it full-on.

And that’s the hardest thing, because it’s a foot in the door for every doubt waiting to come flooding in: How much else has he missed--is he missing? What other mines are waiting patiently for just the wrong step?

 _Scott._ The professor’s voice in his head still isn’t comfortable, exactly, but it’s familiar enough not to startle him, at least not as badly as it had at first. _Would you please join us in the sitting room?_ The professor must pick up on Scott’s first thought, because he adds, _You’re not in trouble. Everything is fine._

He can hear the murmur of conversation when he gets close--Hank’s voice, muffled; and then Alex asks, “So, you think you can help him?”

“Oh, unquestionably,” says a new voice--a _familiar_ voice, only, it can’t be, not here. There are walls, and Professor Xavier, and Hank, and Alex; and the professor _promised_. Scott forces himself to breathe-- _Westchester. Safe. Alex._ \--and opens the door.

“Scott,” says the professor, and his voice is all warmth and kindness, like he doesn’t understand that it’s the end of the world. “This is Dr. Essex. He’s--a colleague of Hank’s, a specialist in genetics. He’s agreed to consult--”

The name is new, but the face is as familiar as the voice. Scott wants to scream, wants to run and never stop, but he knows it doesn’t matter. There’s nowhere he can run that’ll ever be far enough, and _safe_ is as much a lie as it’s always been. “Dr. Milbury.”

Milbury smiles, all teeth and darkness. “Hello, Gabriel. I’ve been terribly worried. Are you ready to come home?”

* * *

“You let him into the _house_?” The air around Alex is shimmering, and his fury is an inferno in Charles’s mind, loud enough to drown out even the tidal wave of Scott’s terror. “You _knew_ , and you had the fucking balls--” He turns to Essex. “Get out.”

Essex raises his hands. “Mr. Summers, please. This situation is far more complex--and far more dangerous--than you can possibly comprehend. The boy you call Scott--”

Alex cuts him off. “ _You don’t say his name_. We saw the photos, your fucking torture chamber. Did Hank mention that, while you two were _bonding_?” He spins to face Charles. “ _How could you_? Bozo I almost get, he’s that fucking naive, but you knew who he was the second he walked in the door.”

“Alex--” Charles starts, and then stops, because Alex is _right_. He knew. And he let Essex--Milbury--in anyway. Offered him tea. Why would he have done that?

 _I must have had a reason_ , Charles thinks. Charles doesn’t do things without good reasons; and Alex knows that, should know that. Alex is wrong. Alex is letting his concern for his brother--admirable, but misplaced--get the best of him.

“It’s more complicated than you think, Alex,” Charles says. _Clearly it must be_. “Please. Just hear him out.”

Essex nods gravely. “This has been a grave misunderstanding. All I ask is that you allow me to explain, and then make up your own minds.”

The rage doesn’t abate, but Alex nods incrementally. “This better be good.”

“Sit down,” Charles tells him.

Alex shakes his head, and Charles notes how carefully he’s positioned himself between Scott and the couch where Essex is sitting. “I don’t think so.” Alex turns to Essex. “ _Talk_.”

“Your brother is dead,” Essex begins.

Alex lunges, and Charles reaches out his mind to stop him short. He can feel Alex struggling against him, and he focuses, _holds_ , until he’s smothered the heat building in Alex’s hands and chest, quelled the wall of anger in his mind to a low simmer.

“Thank you,” Essex tells Charles, with a nod, then addresses Alex. “I know this is difficult to hear, and I am truly sorry. Scott spent four years under my care. I remember him well--he was a remarkable boy.”

With most of his mind focused on the delicate work of keeping Alex frozen in place without affecting his comprehension, speech comes more slowly than Charles would like. “You understand that this is difficult to accept,” he tells Essex. “Particularly considering the circumstances.”

Essex nods. “I have no doubt. You’re welcome to read my mind, if you don’t trust me.”

He should, Xavier thinks; but that would mean letting Alex go. That Essex made the offer at all is surely demonstration enough of his good faith. “You said Scott was your patient for--four years? What happened?”

“Scott had sustained severe brain damage in an airplane crash. Initially, he appeared to have made a remarkable recovery, with only slightly diminished function, and only a few long-term residual effects.”

Essex shakes his head, and even without scanning, Xavier can sense the sincerity of his regret. “The true extent of his injuries became clear only when his mutation manifested. The damage created a feedback loop in his brain. I did everything I could; but it wasn’t enough. Afterwards, I dedicated my career to understanding--and helping--children with severe and dangerous mutations.

“This, you see, is why my facility was run under an assumed name. You of all people surely understand the terrible vulnerability of such children--the danger, were the wrong people to discover them. I did my best to keep my patients safe, and to ensure that anyone who came looking for them would leave empty handed.”

Charles can feel Alex struggling to speak, and relaxes his control just enough to let Alex spit out, “The fucking _basement_. That wasn’t--”

Essex sighs. “Mr. Summers, consider: What did you actually see? I will admit that collecting vintage medical oddities is something of a macabre hobby, but I am a doctor--one who has dedicated his life to the study of radical human anomaly. I knew the incident would attract the wrong sort of attention, and so I destroyed my files and equipment in haste, for fear that they might fall into the wrong hands. I assure you, my first and only concern was and remains the welfare of my patients.”

Hank speaks up, finally. “And _our_ Scott? How does he fit into all of this?” Scott looks up at the sound of Hank’s voice, and for a moment, all Charles can see is the boy in the chalk square, drowning in his own fear and resignation.

“His real name is Gabriel Pryor,” explains Essex. “He came to my attention three years ago, after his mutation manifested, killing his parents and younger brother. Gabriel is a powerful psion and psychokinetic, with no conscious control of his powers. He had developed paranoid delusions, and was warping reality itself to make them manifest.”

Essex turns back to Alex. “Your brother’s death has never stopped weighing on my mind. With Gabriel, I thought--well, perhaps I saw him as some means of redeeming myself. To save him, as I couldn’t save Scott. Perhaps I was obsessing, or perhaps Gabriel simply happened to stumble across some incidental detail in my thoughts, but he became fixated on your brother’s case, and very rapidly became convinced that _he_ was in fact Scott Summers. He used his powers to break into my files as well as my memories of the actual Scott, and remade himself in the boy’s image, even to the point of replicating the his powers.”

Hank nods. “Of course. It explains everything.”

“He’s lying,” Scott pleads. “Hank, you can’t just--Professor--you’ve been in my mind! You have to know this is all wrong.”

 _Is it?_ Scott is disoriented, desperate-- _grasping at straws_ , Charles thinks.

Essex turns to Charles. “And I expect that you found some significant anomalies there. Fragmentary memories, for instance--he’s literally pieced himself together from bits of other people’s memories, and subconsciously synthesized them into the person he thinks Scott Summers was--the person Gabriel believes himself to be.”

“I imagine he did much the same to you,” Essex tells Alex. “Shared memories, things you thought no one else could possibly know.”

Alex’s mouth tightens, but in his mind, Charles can feel doubt start to creep in. _Good_ , Charles thinks, although the thought comes with a jolt of trepidation he doesn’t entirely understand.

“That’s because no one else _does_ know those things,” explains Essex. “Gabriel is unconsciously skimming your memories and recontextualizing them from your brother’s perspective, or what he imagines it to be.”

“You can’t really believe this,” Scott protests. “Alex, _for God’s sake_. It’s _me_ , you _know_ it’s me, _please_ \--”

“Let me emphasize that what he does is not a product of malice or design,” Essex continues. “As you can see, Gabriel truly believes himself to be Scott Summers. I’m so sorry, Alex; I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for you.”

The fire is gone entirely now. Charles pushes gently, and when he meets no resistance, he retreats from Alex’s mind, and watches as Alex stumbles back and sags against the wall beside Scott. _No, not Scott_ , Charles corrects himself. _Gabriel_.

“This is--” Alex starts. “No. You know what? Scott’s right. This is crazy. Why the hell should any of us believe a word of this?” _Does he mean it?_ Charles is neither certain nor concerned. Now that he’s let go of Alex, it’s as if a pleasant haze has settled over his own mind, an anesthetic certainty that this will all work out for the best.

“Is it really so difficult?” Essex asks. “You accepted that your elder brother--whom you had believed to be dead for nearly twenty years--had been miraculously returned to you, now fourteen years your junior. All I’m offering is a plausible explanation as to how.”

“It explains the other anomalies as well,” Hank pipes up. “The healing, the brain scans--everything, really. I know you want him to be real, Alex-- _I_ want him to be real--but we can’t ignore the evidence.”

“No--” Scott--Gabriel--pleads again. “Hank, it’s not--he’s using you. He’s messing with your head. _Please_ , you have to listen to me.” He’s crying in earnest now, and his fear rips jagged, knife-edged through the fog in Charles’s mind. 

And Charles pauses.

He thinks back to his first foray into Scott’s thoughts, the frightened child huddled in the wreckage of his own mind. There had been anomalies, certainly; damage; traces of past intrusion; but none of the slippery gloss of delusion, and no sign of a residual consciousness beneath Scott’s own. Charles had seen Milbury there, too, he remembers; and the Milbury in Scott’s memories--fragmentary though they may have been--is not a man Charles Xavier would ever trust with a child.

And yet, he _does_ trust the man, doesn’t he? Surely he scanned Essex’s thoughts when he arrived? Surely Charles would never have discussed so vulnerable a student with a stranger, were he not confident in the man’s good intentions?

Beside Charles, Hank is hunched on the couch, his mind a miserable tangle of doubt and confusion, caught in contradictions he can’t reconcile. Across the room, Scott and Alex are a single maelstrom of fear and anguish. Essex watches the brothers and sips his tea, a faint smile playing across his lips.

 _This is wrong_ , Charles thinks.

It’s difficult to focus on Essex’s mind. Charles skims along the surface like a stone on water, skipping and sliding. It reminds him of casinos in Vegas, the cacophony meant to distract and misdirect, to keep men stumbling from illusion to diversion, shedding money unquestioningly.

The last time he was in Las Vegas, Charles left six figures richer than he had arrived. He steels his mind and focuses his will, and pushes through the silky sheen of Essex’s superficial thoughts into something cold and alien: a predator devoid of humanity or conscience, utterly implacable, and somehow terribly familiar. Worse, it senses him, too. Essex’s mind snaps closed with the finality of a portcullis, and Charles finds himself back in his chair, head pounding.

Beside him, Essex clicks his tongue and frowns. “Oh, _Charles_ ,” he says, and suddenly the warmth is gone from his voice. “That was a mistake.”

* * *

There’s only one X-Man Alex has ever really been scared of. When push comes to shove, the worst most of them could do is kill him--but Charles is another story. He’s powerful in ways that make Alex look like a kid with a book of matches. Charles is the H-bomb to everyone else’s .22s, one bad day away from a one-man apocalypse.

So when Charles jerks back from Essex--or Milbury, or whatever the fuck his real name is--like he’s been burned, and Essex _laughs_ , Alex knows they’re fucked on a whole new level.

“Scott,” Charles says, very evenly, “Go upstairs. _Now_.”

Essex stands, teacup still in hand, smiling like he’s the only one in on the joke. “I don’t think so.” He snaps his fingers, and suddenly Scott is doubled over, screaming, clawing at his head. It’s the nightmarish headaches Alex remembers from Anchorage, but a million times worse. He does the only thing he can think of, grabs Scott, tries to hold him still. 

“What the hell did you do to him?” Alex yells at Essex, struggling to pry Scott’s hands away from his face.

“Actions have consequences.” Has Essex somehow gotten _taller_? “Scott, are you ready to come quietly?”

Under Alex, Scott shakes his head, still pressed into his hands.

“Let him go,” Alex tells Essex. “Or I swear to God--” He’s already halfway to his feet, one arm raised.

Essex’s smile is all teeth. “God is unlikely to be of much help. And oh, _hello_ Charles. I think perhaps we should keep that dangerous mind of yours occupied, hm?” He glances over at Hank. “Dr. McCoy. Kill the brother.”

Hank changes as he leaps--faster than Alex has ever seen him move, faster than Alex can react--fur sprouting from under his clothes, claws bared. There’s a fraction of a second when Alex knows he could stop him if he fired, but it would mean killing _Hank_ ; and in the moment Alex hesitates, Hank is on him, a flurry of teeth and claws and enough mass to slam Alex down to the floor, to pin him as one clawed hand darts in to find Alex’s throat--

And freezes.

For a fraction of a second, something changes in Hank’s eyes, and he’s _Hank_ again. “Alex,” he hisses, “I can’t--you have to--” And that makes it so much worse when a moment later, Hank’s gone; and it’s just the Beast, snarling, claws trembling a millimeter from Alex’s neck.

Across the room, Essex applauds. “Oh, _very_ well done, Charles. You’re more impressive than I expected. Of course, we both know you can’t hold him there and push me out of his mind at once--and Mr. Summers, I take it we won’t be seeing any untoward demonstrations of your abilities, either?”

“Fuck you,” Alex tells him. With Hank’s full weight on his chest, it’s a struggle even to breathe; not to pay attention to the claws against his throat or the fur brushing against his skin, or the fact that Essex couldn’t have come up with a better way to fuck with Alex’s head if he’d had a direct line. “I’m going to burn you to the fucking ground.”

Alex can’t sit up, can’t even lift his head without Hank’s claws digging into his neck, so he’s stuck watching out of the corner of his eye as Essex strides across the room and drags Scott to his feet. “Know when you’re beaten, boy.” 

“Not my strong suit,” Alex snaps back. His arms are pinned, but right now Hank’s mostly just dead weight; and if Alex wriggles just right, he can halfway free one hand, maybe even enough to aim, if he can just figure out an angle--

A boot slams down on his free hand, and Alex hears the bones snap a moment before he feels it. Even then, the worst part isn’t the pain. It’s that he can’t move, can’t hit back or pull away or even fucking roll into it. Scott is shouting at Essex; and Alex can’t reach him, can’t even turn to look without slitting his own throat on Hank’s claws.

“So eager,” says Essex. “And to what end?” Something grinds as the boot bears down, and this time Alex can’t quite bite back a scream. He squeezes his eyes shut, wills himself not to throw up or pass out; and isn’t entirely sure he’s succeeded until he hears Essex add, “He isn’t your brother, you know. Not really.”

“Get a new act,” Alex growls through gritted teeth. His heart is pounding; every pulse sends a new jolt of agony that he can feel all the way up to his shoulder.

“It’s true, though,” says Essex. “Not that Gabriel Pryor nonsense, of course. But he’s not the original Scott Summers. Frankly, he’s not even my best copy.” Scott makes a strangled noise, and stumbles; and Alex catches a brief glimpse of his face, pale and terrified, in the moment before Essex pulls him back up.

“Oh, don’t look so surprised. Surely _one_ of you must have suspected. McCoy was close, or would have been, if he hadn’t been blinded by his appalling lack of vision.” Essex leans down and scratches behind Hank’s ears, like he’s petting a dog, and Alex decides again that he’s going to find some way to kill Essex--ideally painfully and repeatedly--if it’s the last thing he does. “Really, Dr. McCoy, you had every piece of the puzzle in hand.”

“That can’t--” Scott says, shakily. “That’s impossible. You’re lying. You have to be lying. I _remember_ \--Alaska, and--”

There’s an inhuman quality to Essex’s laugh, something clawed and dangerous that Alex can feel as much as hear. “You _remember_ the echoes of a dead boy’s life.”

“Alex--” Scott starts, but Essex interrupts.

“ _Alex_. It always comes back to _Alex_ , doesn’t it?” Alex watches Essex’s shadow shift, and tries to brace for whatever’s coming next. “You know, they always remember you, no matter how much else I wipe away. Scrape out every detail down to his own name, and Scott Summers will still wake up in the middle of the night crying for _Alex_.” 

Essex pauses to sip his tea. “Perhaps if I’d had an undamaged brain to work from--but then, _if wishes were horses_ \--isn’t that so, Scott?”

“Fuck you,” Alex tells him. “I’m not falling for this shit. Charles, fucking _do something_ \--”

“Yes, Charles,” says Essex. “Perhaps you should read my mind. I’ll even let you, this time. Of course, it would mean loosening your grip on McCoy, but I suspect this will go more smoothly for all of us if you’re certain of the truth.”

There’s a horrible fraction of a second when Alex sees Hank’s eyes widen, feels the claws start to dig into his neck, before Hank freezes again.

“He’s not lying.” The professor’s sounds weary. “The original Scott died in 1958.” Behind him, Alex hears Scott’s breathing hitch. _Five years_ , Alex thinks. _Five fucking years, and I never knew._. In ‘58, Alex had been in Hawaii, gritting his teeth through football practice and trying to ignore the feeling that something inside him was building up towards an explosion. There’s something else about the date, something important; but everything’s swimming, and he can’t fucking _think_.

“Such a fascinating mutation,” Essex muses. “Alas, to study a living brain is a delicate matter, with certain innate risks.”

 _It’s the date from the first set of autopsy photos_ , Alex realizes. _1958_. What had the others been? _’61, ‘63, ‘67_ \-- _Not even my best copy_ , Essex had said.

Alex can’t stop himself from asking: “How many?”

“He’s the eighth, I think.” Essex says it as casually as if he were counting buttons. “No--the ninth. Not counting the early failures, of course. Or the original.” The photos playing through Alex’s head on loop-- _Scott after Scott after Scott, dying in this motherfucker’s hands_ \--are almost enough to drown out the throbbing awfulness of his hand. “Of course, if I’d had an undamaged template to work from, perhaps one that was sufficiently genetically similar--”

“ _No_.” Scott is yelling now, and Alex can hear him struggling. “You stay the hell away from Alex. I’m not letting you--”

“ _You are not in a position to make demands._ ” The struggling stops, abruptly. “The time and resources your infantile sentimentality have cost me--” Essex’s voice shifts into an uncanny mimicry of Scott: “ _Alex is alive_. Every time. Every iteration.” Essex pauses. “I wonder if it would stick if you actually saw him die.”

“No,” says Scott again--this time, more scared than angry. “No. You win, okay? I’ll go with you. You don’t have to--please. Leave him out of this.” It’s the warehouse all over again, only this time Alex is even more useless. _We’re going to die here_ , he realizes, with absolute, hopeless certainty.

Essex kneels and runs a hand along Alex’s face; and Alex flinches away until he’s trapped himself between Essex’s hand and Hank’s claws “Now, what to do with you? Your genetic potential has always been secondary. Uninteresting.” He sighs. “Really, I can’t think of a reason to keep you alive.”

“Funny,” Alex tells him, “I was thinking the same thing about you.” If he can’t hit back, he’ll at least stay a pain in the ass to the end.

“Charming,” says Essex. “Well. You can at least serve as an object lesson. Dr. McCoy--”

“Wait,” interrupts Scott. “I’ll--I’ll do it.”

For the first time, Essex sounds genuinely surprised. “ _Really_.”

 _It’s another game_ , Alex thinks. _He’s making Scott say it. Playing with us. Cat and mice._ “Leave him out of this,” he tells Essex.

Scott sounds more certain now. “Alex, no. It’s not--he’s won. There’s nothing--neither of us gets to walk away this time. He’s going to kill you, and then he’s going to kill me and start over with another copy. Right?”

“Hm,” says Essex. He’s still kneeling over Alex, but he’s turned to watch Scott, eyes narrow, face cautious.

“Yeah,” says Scott. “I figured. But he’ll remember this, right? The next one?”

“If I want him to,” says Essex.

“Okay,” says Scott. “Then at least--let me at least make it quick.” His hand flits to the edge of his glasses, and suddenly Alex _gets it_. It’s so brilliant, so absolutely goddamn insane, that he has to bite down hard on his lip to keep himself from laughing aloud.

Behind him, Scott is still pleading, selling it for all he’s worth: “He’s my brother. The real Scott’s brother. _Please_. I owe him that much.”

Essex glances over to Alex, and Alex screws his eyes shut, focuses on the jagged pain in his hand, and hopes to hell that whatever mind-control bullshit Essex can do doesn’t extend to actually reading thoughts.

Finally, Essex stands. “It makes no difference to me. McCoy, go keep Charles busy.” Hank bounds away. Alex struggles to his feet and staggers back to the wall before the floor can slip out from under him.

“You know you can’t stop this,” Essex tells Scott. “No matter what you’re planning--it’ll be that much worse for you.”

“I know,” says Scott. He bites his lip, and glances over to Alex. “Alex, I--”

“I know,” Alex tells him. “It’s okay.” And then, because he can’t bring himself to leave it there, he tells Scott, “Meet you on the other side?” _One way or another_ , he figures.

“Deal,” says Scott; and Alex is pretty sure he sees a smile flicker across his brother’s face before Scott reaches for his glasses and everything goes red.

He’s felt the edges of Scott’s powers before, but the full brunt of the blast is a searing rush of energy-- _like swallowing a power line_ , Alex thinks, until it’s too excruciating to think at all. He’s burning up from the inside out, glowing so brightly he can’t even stand to look at his own hands--brightly enough to catch the attention of Essex, who’s been too busy watching Scott to check if Alex is still standing. Essex turns, and the implacable mask falters for just a moment.

“Actions have consequences, asshole,” says Alex, and fires.

* * *

The moments fall around Scott like snapshots. Hank, doubled over on the couch, apologizing over and over. A line of holes in wall after wall after wall; a patch of sunlight leaking in at the far end of the wing; and beyond, a line of charred and splintered trees.

_not even my best copy_

The professor is saying something, or maybe thinking it, but it’s like morse code, a bad radio signal, nothing but noise. Across the room, Alex collapses against the wall, clutching his ruined hand, the air around him still shimmering; and Scott could have _killed_ him; he hadn’t known it would work, not for sure, but he’d been so desperate, and--

_echoes of a dead boy’s life_

Scott runs.

* * *

Alex is pretty sure even Charles doesn’t know about the ice cream truck: a mossy shell in the far end of the woods on the Xavier estate, advertising the rusted remains of sixteen different flavors. Sean had found it first, and dubbed it Fort Delicious; and they’d spent a lot of afternoons on the roof, getting high and coming up with dumb theories about how the hell it had landed in a clearing with no visible road access. 

He’d taken Scott down to the truck the first time they’d gotten out around the grounds--hadn’t mentioned Sean or any of that shit, but he’d wanted to show Scott something off the beaten path, the kind of place you only know about if you belong somewhere. It’s the only place Alex can think of that he hasn’t looked: he’s been through the mansion twice; down to the lake; along every path and road on the estate. He’s managed to catch up with Scott a few times--in the kitchen, with a half-poured bowl of cereal; downstairs, talking with Hank--but as soon as Scott sees Alex, he bolts. He hasn’t been back to their room in days.

He almost misses Scott this time, until something rustles overhead, and Alex spots a glimpse of a white-grey sneaker through the leaves some forty-odd feet up one of the old oaks at the edge of the clearing. There’s no way Scott hasn’t spotted him from that high, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move; so Alex settles down at the foot of the tree to stare at the truck’s tattered awning through a head full of painkillers while the freezing damp from the moss seeps through his jeans.

He hopes to fuck that Scott hasn’t been sleeping there.

“I brought you a sandwich,” Alex calls up, once he’s gotten tired of waiting. He’s gone through a lot of versions of this conversation in the days since waking up to a vicious hangover, four pins in his hand, and an obnoxiously contrite Hank; but none of them had started like this. _Oh, well_. “Hank said--”

Hank had said a lot of things, most of them apologies. Alex had finally threatened to hit him if he apologized again, and then followed through--with his broken hand, because apparently the combination of Hank and Demerol knocks Alex’s head into an _extra fucking special_ kind of stupid. It had at least shocked Hank into brief sanity; even if the subsequent conversation had sucked even more than the punch.

Charles isn’t much better. He and Hank have each independently decided that everything that happened with Essex is entirely their fault; and the fog of guilt and misery in the house is so thick that Alex is pretty sure it’s developed an actual flavor. Charles hides in his office or Cerebro, and Hank paces figure-eights in the lab; leaving Alex--somehow--as the most functional adult in any given room. It’s enough to make him want to either laugh or throw up, depending on how recently he’s taken his pain meds.

He’s not going to tell Scott any of that, though. “There’s soup, too. Might be cold, by now.”

Scott doesn’t answer.

“No one’s mad,” Alex tells him. “Seriously. I just want to talk to you.”

He thinks he sees one of the shoes shift, a little.

“Come on,” Alex says. “Don’t make me climb up one-handed.”

That gets a response. “Don’t do that.”

“Not actually sure I can,” Alex tells him. “But I’ll fucking try if you don’t come down.” He makes it as far as the first foothold before Scott yells at him to wait and starts to clamber down.

Scott perches around head level, knees pulled up to his chest, head cocked warily. He looks awful--his clothes are muddy, he’s obviously been crying, and his knuckles are the kind of mess that Alex recognizes from a lifetime of punching walls.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he tells Alex, his voice flat and miserable.

“Don’t be dumb,” Alex says. “You’re my--”

Scott cuts him off. “ _No, I’m not_. Leave me alone. You shouldn’t have to talk to me, not after--”

“Scott,” Alex starts.

Scott interrupts again. “ _That’s not my name_. It’s _his_ , and I stole it, and--”

“Okay,” Alex says. This one, at least, he’s ready for. “Fine, okay. We can start there. First of all, I’m pretty fucking sure the only person who stole anything was Essex. Milbury. Whatever. Not you.”

“I should have known,” Scott says. “He was right. I mean, it should have been obvious. The dates, and--stuff he used to say. I was so dumb.” He shudders. Alex is starting to rethink the logistics of the climb, because watching Scott curl in on himself, just out of reach, is breaking his goddamn heart.

But if he pushes it, he’ll spook Scott, and God only knows how long it’ll take to find him again. Alex stays on the ground. “He was messing with your head,” he tells Scott. “But sure. Let’s say you’re right. My brother is dead for real, and you’re someone else. Then I’m his only living relative. And I don’t have any of his stuff, I don’t have fucking anything, but I’ve got his name. That’s mine. Fair?”

Scott nods, mouth tight.

“Right,” says Alex. “Then I can do whatever I want with it, and I’m giving it to you.”

“You can’t just--” Scott starts.

“ _Yeah, I can_ ,” Alex tells him. “You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to. But it’s yours now. And you’d probably know better than me, but I’m pretty sure that’s how the original Scott would want it, too.”

Scott stays silent.

“Okay,” says Alex. “As for the rest.” This is the part he’s been over and over, the part he knows he can’t afford to fuck up or leave to chance. “I don’t really believe in God, or miracles, or any of that shit. But finding you again--I know it’s more complicated than that, but it’s still a hell of a lot more of a second chance than most people get. So, yeah. I don’t really give a fuck if you’re a clone, or a space alien, or a robot, or a figment of my fucking imagination. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still Scott. You’re still my brother. This doesn’t change any of that.”

Scott still hasn’t said anything, and it occurs to Alex that he might have miscalculated. “I don’t mean--if this changes that for you, if you want something else, that’s cool. You want to change your name and move to Fiji and never talk to me again, that’s your call. Just--only if it’s what you really want, okay? Not if it’s something you think you have to do for me.”

There’s a rustle overhead, as Scott climbs the rest of the way down and stands just out of Alex’s reach, eyes fixed firmly on his feet.

“I asked Professor Xavier to erase it,” Scott finally says. “All the real Scott’s stuff. You, and Alaska, and--everything.”

It’s like a boot to the chest. “Oh.”

“He wouldn’t,” says Scott. “And I was--I should have been mad, but I was so relieved, because I never actually wanted--it just seemed like the right thing to do. I know it’s fake, and none of it’s really mine, but I still _remember_ it all, you know? And I can’t--what Milbury said. He was right. I can’t let go of any of it. You.”

Alex thinks he’s been doing a pretty fucking good job holding it together, at least in front of Scott; but the surge of fear and relief cracks right through whatever cool he had left. He’s half expecting Scott to run as soon as he comes closer, but instead Scott latches on to him like a little kid, clutching at Alex’s jacket, crying so hard Alex is half expecting him to shake apart in his hands.

 _Backwards through hell_ , Alex thinks. “It’s okay,” he whispers into Scott’s hair. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” This time, he almost believes it.

* * *

Scott doesn’t understand why he can’t stop crying. “ _I’m okay_ ,” he insists to Alex, gasping for breath between sobs. “I know,” says Alex, and somehow that’s enough to set Scott off _again_. It’s like all the awfulness is hitting him at once--not just Jack, and Milbury, and the basement--but all the other stuff, things he _knows_ never even really happened, at least not to him.

“It’s okay,” Alex keeps telling him, but it’s not, it’s really, _really_ not, and Scott doesn’t see how it ever can be. He can’t even figure out how much of what he remembers of the orphanage is his, and how much is from the dead versions of him who came before. And he _still_ can’t stop crying.

By the time he can pause for long enough to catch his breath, it’s almost dusk. Alex’s shirt is wrecked--one more thing Scott has ruined, and he knows he should feel bad about that, but all he really feels is hollow.

Alex rubs a hand up and down his back. “When’s the last time you slept?

“Dunno. A while.” He’s so tired that it hurts, but every time he closes his eyes-- “I can’t stop thinking about the other ones,” he tells Alex. “It’s not fair. That I got this, and they all--you heard what he said. About you. They all remembered, and none of them even got to--It’s so screwed up.” Rows of his own face, all watching, all asking the same question: Why he got this, and they didn’t.

 _Not even my best copy_ , Milbury had said. Scott wishes that explained less than it does.

“Yeah,” says Alex. He looks almost as wrung out as Scott feels, with shadows under his eyes and five days’ worth of patchy beard. His right hand--the one Milbury stepped on--is splinted and wrapped from elbow to fingertips, and it’s all Scott’s fault.

He wonders what all the dead Scotts would say about how badly he’s screwing everything up. Whether they’d be angry, or just sad.

“No one even knew,” he tells Alex. “It was--the basement was _so bad_.” Alex hasn’t asked for details, and Scott decided weeks ago that he’d never have to hear them. It’s awful enough that Alex was there at all, that he _saw_. “You don’t--what you saw, it wasn’t even--and they _died_ there. _Alone_.” Scott can feel himself starting to cry again, and he clenches his hands and bites down on his lip, hard, trying to will himself to stop.

Alex doesn’t sound much happier. “I wish I could fucking--” he breaks off with a sigh, and runs his intact hand through his hair. “Never mind. It’s not your fault. None of this shit is your fault. You know that, right?”

“I don’t know,” Scott tells him. “I don’t even know what counts as _me_.” He’s been trying to remember, trying to work out which memories are really his, but it all feels the same.

Alex shrugs. “Whatever you want.”

Scott doesn’t get how he can sound so sure. “I remember stuff that happened to someone else,” he tries to explain. “He’s--Hank thinks I’m--” It’s hard to say aloud. “That it’s been maybe three or four years? But I remember, like, 1950. I remember when you were _born_.”

Alex rests his head on Scott’s shoulder. “Yeah? Was I awesome?”

“You were really little,” Scott tells him. “And really loud.” He remembers tracing the back of his hand against the powder-soft skin of Alex’s cheek, the way Alex’s tiny fingers had wrapped around Scott’s thumb and hung on for dear life. “It was cool, though. I knew you’d turn out okay.”

Alex laughs. “Shows what you know.”

“Dad said it was my job to look out for you,” Scott tells him, then realizes--not for the first time, but every time it’s a whole new loss-- “Except he’s not my--I don’t have--God, does that make _Milbury_ \--” He doesn’t want to belong to Milbury, not in any way, but especially not like _that_.

“No,” Alex says. “Jesus, _no_. They’re still your parents. They’d still recognize you. I recognized you, right?”

Scott still isn’t sure he recognizes _himself_. “Do you think they’d--” He can’t bring himself to finish.

“Yeah,” says Alex. “They wouldn’t care. They were cool.”

“You don’t know that,” Scott points out. “You were eight. Do you even really remember them?”

“Some,” Alex tells him. “Why? Were they secretly assholes?”

“No,” says Scott. “They were--” The memories of home have always been an equal mix of comfort and sadness, but now everything seems tainted, wrong. “They were good people.”

“There you go, then,” says Alex, like it’s that easy.

Scott is less certain, but of course, there’s no way to know--and he kind of hates himself for being grateful for how much simpler that makes it. “What do I do? Now?”

Alex shrugs. “I dunno. What do you want to do?”

 _Stay here. Run away._ “I don’t know.”

“What did you want to do last week?”

Last week, he had still been a real person, sharing a room with Alex and worrying about school. Last week is a lifetime ago. “I don’t know.” 

“Okay,” says Alex. He stands slowly, stretches, and offers Scott a hand. “How about we start by going inside, and you get some food and some dry clothes, and then we can figure it out from there.”

 _Inside_ is equal parts appealing and terrifying. “Okay.”

“We don’t have to stay here you know,” Alex tells him, when they’re about halfway back to the house. “I could get a place in town. Or, hell, we could just pick up and start driving.”

“Where?” Scott asks.

Alex shrugs. “Anywhere.”

“The Dart doesn’t run,” Scott points out. “And can you even drive? With that?” _The awful crack as Milbury stamped down; Alex screaming_. They’re within sight of the house now, and every step is one closer to where--

“We can take one of the other cars,” says Alex. “I’ll steer, you shift.”

“The Dart’s a classic,” Scott parrots Alex.

Alex sighs. “I’m pretty sure the drive shaft’s cracked.”

“But we can fix it, right?” Last week, Scott had pretty much given up on the Dart, but now it feels important, maybe more important than anything.

Alex puts an arm around his shoulders. “Yeah,” he tells Scott. “We can fix it.”

* * *

* * *

* * *

Montana lists its speed limits at 55, but everyone knows it’s a five-buck ticket and no record. Alex takes the Dart flat out along I-94, pushes her until the needle’s scraping the edge of 120, wind roaring in his ears.

Scott yells something from the passenger seat, and Alex rolls up his window. “What?”

“Five miles to 19.” Scott takes his job as navigator seriously. He’s got a series of maps, carefully marked up in ballpoint pen: west all the way to the middle of Montana, then north through the Canadian Rockies.

“How far to the border?” Alex asks him.

Scott consults his map. “200, give or take.” He’s been quiet for most of Montana, and Alex doesn’t know if he’s just tired after a week on the road, or if it’s something else. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Canada.”

“We went camping in BC once,” Alex tells him. Scott’s memory is a sore spot, and correcting him doesn’t always go well. Aside from the time around the crash, there’s no real rhyme or reason to what’s missing: Scott remembers the house in Anchorage well enough to draw its floor plans, but nothing about his kindergarten or elementary school except for the name of one fourth grade math teacher. He can list every plane their dad flew in the Air Force, but can’t describe his face. Even Charles hasn’t been able to work out how many of the missing pieces might someday be retrievable; or--worse--which ones were lost to the crash and which to Essex.

Scott leans his head against the door. “I don’t remember any of that.” 

“It’s okay,” says Alex, which is pretty much his job every time they have this conversation. “I mostly just remember really wanting to catch a fish.”

“Did you?” Scott asks.

“Dunno,” Alex tells him. “Probably not.”

Scott nods. “Sometimes it’s better like this,” he says. “When it’s not important stuff. I mean, _I’ve_ never been to Canada either way.”

“Yet,” Alex corrects him. It’s something between a game and a ritual by now.

“Yet,” Scott agrees. “Slow down. I want to survive long enough to get a stamp on my passport.”

They stop in Chinook for gas. There’s a rack of postcards by the register, and Alex flips through until he finds one that’s nothing but the big Montana sky. He borrows a pen to scrawl on the back,

 _Hey, Bozo._  
_Look at that all that blue. You’d fit right in._  
_A_

After they’ve found a mailbox, Scott curls up on the Dart’s bench seat and rests his head in Alex’s lap. He reminds Alex of a colt--all legs, and pretty soon he’s going to be taller than Alex. _Again_.

 _About goddamn time_ , Alex thinks, and has to bite back a laugh.

“You okay?” he asks Scott.

“Yeah,” says Scott, then amends. “I don’t know. This just feels really--final.”

It takes a moment for Alex to figure out what he means. “Canada?”

“Yeah,” says Scott. “Before, it was--we were just driving west. We could have been going anywhere, you know? Now--” he shrugs and pulls his legs tighter to his chest.

Alex eases off the gas a little. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“We crash and die in the Rockies.” Scott’s obviously been working on the list. “We crash and you die and Dr. Milbury is alive and he did something to Hank and Professor Xavier and we couldn’t stop him because we weren’t there and I try to run away but he finds me anyway and the sun goes red giant like a million years early and destroys all life on Earth. You get in a fight and get arrested and they figure out that my passport is fake--”

“Your passport’s real,” Alex tells him.

“Fine,” says Scott, “ _Fraudulent_. Whatever. And we go to jail and Professor Xavier has to come all the way out here to get us out and you both hate me. The glasses stop working and I destroy something and the trip is ruined and I never actually get to see Anchorage.”

“None of that’s going to happen,” says Alex. “You know that, right?” He’s still not sure where Scott’s worst-case scenarios fall on the scale between running joke and genuine concern.

“I know,” says Scott. He’s quiet for a minute, then says, “We get through Canada, and it’s fine, and then we get to Anchorage and I don’t remember anything.”

“You remember Anchorage,” Alex reminds him. “What street was the house on?”

“East Pembroke,” Scott says, reflexively. “Okay, fine. We get to Anchorage, and I remember some of it, but everything’s different, and it’s like one big reminder that I was never really there. And someone recognizes us, and we have to explain--I don’t know. And then we go back home, and everything’s weird between us, because we made it into this big deal, like we were expecting it would fix everything, only it won’t.”

Alex pulls onto the shoulder and feels Scott brace as he grinds the Dart to a stop in a spray of gravel. “ _Shit_.”

Scott sits up, scoots away. “Sorry. It’s--I didn’t-- _I’m sorry_. I didn’t mean--”

“No,” says Alex, resting his forehead against the wheel. “No. It’s--me, too. _Fuck_.”

“Yeah” says Scott. He’s got the glove open, and he’s shuffling through his maps like a hand of cards. Alex reaches for the lighter on reflex, spins it between his fingers, siphoning off what little heat is left.

“We could keep going west,” Alex says, after a minute.

The shuffling stops. “What about Anchorage?”

“Fuck Anchorage,” says Alex. There’s nothing waiting for them there but ghosts. “Let’s go to California.”

Scott frowns down at the stack of papers in his hands. “We don’t have a map. Have you ever even been there?”

“No,” says Alex. “It’s west. Southwestish. Can’t be that hard to find.”

“Southwestish,” Scott repeats, skeptically. Alex is expecting him to protest, but instead, Scott nods slowly, before giving the maps one last glance, then sticking them in the glove. He closes it with a click. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “Let’s go to California.”

*

The sun laps them while they’re driving west, but they keep going by silent consensus. When the road starts to blur out from under him, Alex hands off the keys to Scott.

He wakes up in the dark and cold, in an empty car. There’s a moment of horrible, absolute panic-- _something’s wrong something’s happened Scott’s gone_ \--before Alex wakes the rest of the way up, and realizes that Scott’s just outside, sitting on the hood. He must hear Alex moving in the car, because he doesn’t even jump when Alex settles down beside him, just nods and passes him a styrofoam cup.

The headlights cut twin beams through the fog before diffusing into the dark. “Where are we?” Alex asks.

“Oregon,” Scott tells him. “Half a mile or so from the coast.” In the dark, there’s a faint glow from his glasses.

“Can you see that far?” Alex asks. Scott’s night vision is fucking ridiculous--one of the few upsides to his mutation.

Scott shakes his head and looks back out into the distance. Alex slurps at his coffee. It’s the kind of unspeakably awful that only happens at gas stations in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, so predictable that it’s almost reassuring. Scott knows Alex’s routine well enough to already have dumped in half a carton of cream and six packets of sugar, which sort of get it to the point of drinkable.

“How far to California?” he asks Scott.

Scott shrugs. “Dunno. Few hours, maybe?”

Alex doesn’t quite know what to make of that. “I figured you’d have picked up a new map by now.”

“I almost did,” Scott admits. “But, no. We can find it.”

Alex leans his head on Scott’s shoulder, and squints into the dark, but there’s nothing to see. Scott wraps an arm around his shoulders, and they stay that way for a long time, watching the headlights dissolve into the night sky.

“Yeah,” Alex tells him. “We’ll get there.”


End file.
